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Sunny - Monere 04 - Mona Lisa C

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MONA LISA CRAVING
A NOVEL OF THE MONÈRE
SUNNY

Copyright © 2008 by DS Studios Inc.

To Cindy Hwang,
who nurtures and grows her garden of authors well.
CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ONE

THE CRESCENT MOON gleamed bright in the star-studded sky, a beacon of light in
the darkness. Not chasing it away. No, darkness was fine. Darkness was our
domain, the time when we roamed and played and hunted. We slept the days and
roamed the evening twilight. And when the sun fell over the edge of the Earth,
that was when we rose. The lunar rays didn’t chase darkness away, so much as
crown it. Make it glisten and glow with shadows and light.

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We weren’t vampires. We were something older, much older than those legends.
We were what begat those first whispers that eventually wound their way into
folklore: The Monère, children of the moon, a people who had fled their dying
planet over four million years ago. Supernatural creatures faster, stronger,
more beautiful than mere humans.
I was the exception to that. The beauty part, that is. I was the pigeon among
all the peacocks. Plain, with straight dark hair and shadow-danced eyes. The
exotic almond tilt of my eyes was my only attractive feature. At five feet
eight, I stood as tall as the shortest of my men, and was built more like a
long-distance runner—lean, pared down like an athlete, with a light, modest
bosom. I hadn’t inherited my mother’s lushness, which was fine by me. It was a
body I was comfortable with. And my simple looks…well, the plainness was not
so surprising. Not in a Mixed Blood, which is what I am. A quarter of me is
human, the other three-quarters of me is Monère, a people I’d only just come
to know existed. And the reason for that? My mother, Mona Sera, a Full Blood
Monère Queen, had tossed my mongrel self away at birth, like garbage. I’d been
raised among the humans. Grew up thinking of myself as such until puberty hit
and the moon’s gifts of greater strength and sharper senses, far more acute
than any human’s could ever be, made it clear that I was more.
I was more than even what I had first suspected. I was a Monère Queen, the
newest one crowned. The first Mixed Blood Queen to ever exist in their long
and bloody history. Unfortunately, I was doing more than my share of adding to
the bloodiness of that history. I’d just returned from High Queen’s Court,
called before the Council to explain my role in Mona Louisa’s death, the Queen
who’d ruled here before me in Louisiana.
Mona Louisa of Louisiana. Had a ring to it now that I rolled the words
together, didn’t it? No longer. She was dead. Not by my hand, though I’d done
my best to kill her after she’d torn my lover’s heart out from his chest and
killed him. When Gryphon died, I had wanted to die, too. But not before
ensuring that Mona Louisa departed this Earth first. After I’d seen that goal
accomplished, I’d been grief-maddened and had submersed myself in my Bengal
tiger form—something I’d suppressed, ran from all my life, that dark,
dangerous beast chained inside me. In my grief-storm of pain and loss, I’d
finally embraced that animal part of me. Lost myself wholly, mindlessly, in my
other self, roaming the forests for a fortnight until my human and animal
minds had merged, come one into the other, and I found myself once more aware
of who and what I am—a part-human Monère Queen who had abandoned her people
for half a month.
One of my people ran beside me now. An enormous wolf with a beautiful, lush
pelt of silver-gray, and autumn brown eyes that gleamed as if a light shone
within him. And it did. Lunar light. He was not a true wolf but a Full Blood
Monère warrior shifted into his animal form. He romped with me now in joy of
the night, and I ran with him in celebration of our time, of our strength, of
our being, lithe and light in my human form, springing ahead of him, veering
sharply aside so that he leaped in front. I followed then, chasing after him.
We danced like that for a time, like children playing, or in our case, like
living creatures who still had life, who should celebrate that life while it
yet remained in them.
Life and death were fickle, sometimes bleeding one into the other. Gryphon, my
first love, had died but he’d made the transition to demon dead. He resided
now in another realm. In Hell. I would see him again one day. Mona Louisa, the
bitch Queen I’d tried so hard to kill and had failed to, was also dead but not
entirely gone. She’d drank demon blood and had become more than Monère…and I
had sucked her light and essence into me. That part of her, that demon-tainted
part, resided in me now.
I ran in human form because, now that it was triggered, that demon essence
within me partially blocked my tiger self, preventing it from coming out
fully. I wondered if the opposite were true, if my animal self prevented the
full manifestation of that demon sliver that lurked within me like a dark,
insidious shadow.

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Others thought I ran the night in my animal form with my master at arms by my
side to keep me safe. But I’d really come here, away from the others’ keen
ears, to speak to him privately.
Deep in the midst of the forest, we came upon a small clearing. Nestled there
was a small hut. The west cottage, it was called. I’d never been here before
and looked upon the charming little structure with pleasure. It was a tiny
thing with yellow siding, a green sloping roof, and matching green trim. The
door was unlocked. I pushed it open and stepped within. It was a simply
furnished but comfortable abode, used as a hunter’s cabin. A place where
Monère warriors shifted back into their upright forms. A place to clean up and
wash off the blood after hunting in their animal selves. There were several
other cabins like this spread out among our vast acreage.
Nails scraped the wooden floor as the wolf entered the cabin and crossed over
to me. A natural wolf, canis lupus, stood thirty inches tall at the shoulders
and weighed 150 pounds. Canis Monère, on the other hand, was much bigger. Or
at least the one before me was. His weight was closer to 250 pounds. And his
shoulders topped a natural wolf’s height by more than half a foot. No wonder
the timber wolf that I’d encountered at High Court, a wolf that had looked
upon me as food, had backed away beneath Dontaine’s growling threat.
A shimmer of light, a pulse of power, and Dontaine stood before me naked and
unadorned, breathtakingly handsome with hair as blindingly bright as sunshine,
and eyes a lush and deep verdant green in his human form. He was tall, and
what I would have called of average build. But average was not a word you used
with Dontaine. With broad shoulders, arms roped with sinewy strength, a chest
sculpted with rippling muscles that flowed like flesh-silk beneath his pale,
flawless skin, he was more heavily muscled than Gryphon, my beautiful, dark,
departed angel, and much less massive than my towering Amber, my Warrior Lord,
my other love.
Dontaine’s hand reached out and I felt that electric, jolting dance upon my
skin, a sensation that came from him alone. He touched me. And his touch was
not like that of a guard but of a new lover—my new lover.
“Mona Lisa.” He whispered my name and title both. The emotions that crossed my
face when I looked at him, truly looked at him and saw him—not just the
surface beauty but the generous, valiant heart that lay beneath it—made his
eyes swirl a deeper green.
He was achingly handsome with bold and noble features, like a blond sun god.
And like most men blessed with fair face and exquisite form, he had the
confidence, the touch of arrogance that usually came with the looks. And he
wasn’t just beautiful but powerful, even for a Full Blood Monère warrior. He
had been Mona Louisa’s favorite, before she had tried to kill me, her
territory forfeited to me as punishment. She’d tried to regain it, and one of
the means she had used was the tall, sumptuously handsome man who stood before
me now, looking at me with soft wonder in his eyes. He’d been left behind to
spy and betray me, but he hadn’t. He’d saved me instead. Not just once, but
again at High Court when I had been questioned there for Mona Louisa’s death.
I’d taken him not just into my body but into my heart. In the midst of sadness
and loss, I’d found love again, unexpectedly. It was because I loved Dontaine
that I needed to talk to him now. So that he did not continue to look at me
that way—with love and happiness.
It had only been one day since we’d returned from my testimony at High Queen’s
Council. And we’d spent most of it reassuring my people here that I would not
be blamed or punished for Mona Louisa’s death, that everything was okay. But
that was a lie. While things may be okay Council-wise—or as much as it could
be after a stir like that—I wasn’t okay. And only Dontaine knew the truth of
this.
I stepped back from my lover’s touch. Dropped my eyes from his compelling male
beauty, from the tempting loveliness of his form, from the raw and tender
heart he offered up to me with those expressive green eyes. I took a hard step
back from it all and said, “We need to talk, Dontaine.”
A beat of silence. When he spoke, it was with quiet tension thrumming in his

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voice. “That never bodes well.”
I guess that was a rule that held true not only for humans but for the Monère
also.
“I will dress,” he said quietly, and I retreated to a corner chair as he
opened the armoire and began to pull on clothes. I would have stared out the
window had there been one, but there was none in this simple cabin. I passed
the time instead with an intricate study of the wood-planked floor.
I felt his presence as he neared and sat by my feet. There were no other
chairs. I would have felt better had he stood instead of seating himself on
the floor below me, a gesture that placed him lower than I, made him even more
vulnerable to me.
My eyes lifted from my perusal of the floor, met his, and flicked away. I
couldn’t say what I had to say to him while looking into those unshielded
eyes.
“Dontaine.” Just his name for a moment, so lovely upon my lips. Then came the
blow. “We cannot be lovers.”
He didn’t say anything, so I rushed to fill in the pregnant silence. “I care
for you. You know that.” It was a truth that he’d seen in my eyes. “But you
also know that there is something very, very wrong with me. You’ve asked no
questions.”
“There has been no time. No opportunity.”
“There is now. Do you have any questions for me?”
A strained silence. Then he asked not what I would have asked after all that
confused madness that had occurred two nights ago, but what was most important
to him. “Why can we not be lovers?”
His hands, long-fingered and elegant, an aristocrat’s hands, were folded
neatly around his bended knees as he sat there on the wooden floor. I focused
on those hands, remembered how they had felt on me, in me, caressing me, and
looked blindly away.
“You and I know that it was not my beast’s hunger that almost overwhelmed me
at High Court.” Though that was what we’d told everyone else. Even Tomas, my
other guard who’d been there that night, believed it to be true. “It was
bloodlust, Dontaine. Demon bloodlust.”
“It is because of Halcyon, the Demon Prince. When you accompanied him.”
Dontaine’s words, more of a statement than a real question, referred to the
time when I had returned with Halcyon to Hell. When my Demon Prince had been
so severely injured because of me…always because of me, it seemed…that he
could not make the trip safely home by himself. Hell was a dangerous place,
even for its ruler.
I closed my eyes, picking my answer carefully, tiptoeing among all the lies to
pick a truth that I could tell him. “Not in the way you think. I wasn’t
infected then. But you’re right, it does involve Halcyon.” It certainly
involved his blood, which Mona Louisa had taken from him against his will,
breaking one of their greatest taboos—drinking a demon’s blood. She’d
blood-raped Halcyon. And I, in turn, had light-raped her. Now both of their
essences dwelled within me. And all of this had to remain a secret. Unknown.
Blaec, the High Lord of Hell, Halcyon’s father, had killed a score of Monère
warriors and their Queen—Mona Louisa, the demon blood violator—to keep this
secret: that drinking their blood can multiply a Monère’s power, endowing them
with demon dead strength. I did not want the next blood bath to be that of my
men.
“It involves Mona Louisa, too,” I said, and told Dontaine nothing he did not
already know. He’d seen my brown eyes turn blue, turn into Mona Louisa’s eyes.
“How, I cannot say. Only that it was the reason why the High Lord of Hell
killed her.”
“But he spared you. Does he know that you have some of their essence in you?”
A good question. The High Lord had seen me drain Mona Louisa of her light, her
energy. He had spared me, believing that keeping my Monère secret—my extremely
rare, extremely dangerous gift of Mortal Draining, that light-drinking thing I
had done—would ensure the keeping of his demon secret. But the real reason he

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had spared me was because his son, Halcyon, had named me as his mate. Because
after six hundred years alone, he had found love.
Still…that was before Blaec knew that his demon secret dwelled as a living
presence within me. That it had infected me. That it evidenced within me
everything they tried to keep hidden from the Monères. Would he still have
spared me had he known this? I would know soon enough. Lucinda, Halcyon’s
sister, had been at High Court, and her presence there had brought out the
demon taint in me. There’d been no hiding it from her. She knew what existed
within me—what was changing me—and would have reported that to the High Lord
and to Halcyon. Death resided within me, most likely lay before me.
“Lucinda will have told them by now,” I said. “If the High Lord, or if
Halcyon…if they come to kill me, you are not to try to stop them or seek
revenge.”
Dontaine froze into a stillness that unnerved me.
“They will be within their rights, Dontaine. Do you understand?”
He shook his head, his voice sounding harsh and strained. “No. I do not
understand.”
“It was something that I did. Something I brought upon myself. I’m sorry to
lay this burden on you, but if anything happens to me, you are the only one
who knows. The only one who can testify before the Council that I hold Halcyon
and the High Lord blameless.”
“For executing you,” he said. “If two of our Queens are killed by demon hand,
even if it is by the High Lord himself again, it will not sit well with the
High Queens Council.”
“What will they do? Go to war with them?” My laugh was short and bitter. “They
would be slaughtered. As would you, all of you here. Everyone I love and hold
dear.” I closed the distance between us, gripped his hand tight. Felt his
electric touch dance with shocking little jolts upon my skin. The sensation
was sharper, more painful than normal, betraying his leaking distress.
“Dontaine, promise me that you will not lift your hand against them if they
come for me.”
A hard, painful jolt shot from his hand to mine, making me gasp. He drew his
hand away so that we no longer touched. “Are you asking me, or ordering me?”
I searched his eyes, those green tumultuous depths. “You are my master at
arms. With command comes great responsibility. You hold our people’s safety in
your hands. Would you see your mother, your sister, killed for no purpose?
Would you throw away their lives—your life—so easily? I ask it of you but if I
must, I will order it. Must I, Dontaine? Must I demand it of you?”
His eyes dropped away from mine. “Mona Lisa…What you ask of me…”
I went into his arms then because I loved him. Because I was hurting him, and
I did not want to. I went into his arms because the torment I glimpsed in his
beautiful eyes just plain broke my heart.
Contact with him lanced me for a sharp, electric second before he brought his
forceful presence back under control.
“Please, Dontaine. I love you. I want to keep you safe. All of you—Jamie,
Tersa, Rosemary, Thaddeus, Chami, Tomas, Aquila, and Amber. You are my family.
The most important beings to me in this world. Please, help me keep you all
safe. I could not bear it if I lost someone else I loved.”
His hands cupped my face, lifted it up to his so that I saw his brilliant,
gleaming eyes, the chiseled lines of his face fierce and raw with emotion.
Perhaps he would have kissed me then. Perhaps I would have let him. A foolish
thing to do when it was infinitely safer to push him away. Safer for him.
I don’t know if I would have given in to that momentary folly. I don’t know
what would have happened afterward. All I suddenly knew was that my gums were
burning as if fire had set them aflame. That my teeth were aching. That I had
a sudden thirsting urge for blood, to feel it sliding hot and sweet down my
throat.
This was what had happened to me at High Court—the promise of fangs. That
promise suddenly became reality. My teeth elongated and pushed upward and
outward through my gums like small mountains erupting. I gasped because it

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hurt like hell. Then gasped again when I felt a sharp sting and looked down to
see blood welling from the hand I’d drawn up to my mouth and pricked. I’d
accidentally cut myself on the sharpness of my own teeth…on my fangs.
“Dear Goddess,” Dontaine whispered. Cold fear skimmed the surface of those two
words.
I pushed away from him and stumbled out the door. Away. I had to get away from
him. I fled outside into the cool night, and in the breeze that glided over my
skin, I felt him—the demon presence outside that had brought forth the demon
presence within me. And not just any demon, but one I knew intimately.
“Halcyon.”
He came to me out of the darkness, my elegant Demon Prince. I sensed him as
I’d never sensed him before, like a heartbeat. Only his heart did not beat, he
did not breathe. He—like the other demons—was dead, demon dead, and we were
not supposed to be able to sense them this strongly. That was what made them
so dangerous—that they could approach us almost undetected. That and their far
greater strength, both mental and physical.
The last time I’d seen Halcyon, he’d been weak and bloodied, his chest ripped
to shreds by a whip. He was not weak now. Others would have looked upon him
and seen an average man in looks, height, and build. He was only a bare
head-tilt taller than I, slender and trim, with dark hair, dark eyes, just
like me. He had a quiet presence rather than a shouting one. A reserved air.
An air of loneliness. An apartness from others that had pulled me to him since
the very first time I became aware of him in a sun-dappled meadow.
A Monère warrior who did not know the Demon Prince would have seen him and
dismissed him in strength and power. Never would have guessed that before him
stood the ruler of Hell, someone far stronger than our greatest Warrior Lord.
I’d never feared Halcyon as others did—his great strength, those lethal nails.
He’d been kind to me from the very first, and not just kind but a friend…and
then a lover in a dream or a vision—you might call it a dream reality.
Whatever it had been, the feelings between us had certainly been real.
Even when I’d seen Halcyon shift into his alternate demon form—huge,
monstrous, ugly—and kill another demon in battle over me, even then I had not
really feared him. But now I did. Because I didn’t just feel Halcyon’s
presence, I felt his emotions. He ached with sadness. Almost overwhelming
grief.
The cabin door opened. Dontaine stepped out, a silver dagger gleaming with
naked threat in his hand, and I felt Halcyon’s grieving sadness flash into
anger.
“Dontaine, leave us,” I said, my voice carefully calm.
My master of arms, my lover, did not obey me. Instead he came to stand beside
me. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”
“I’m sorry, too.” With a blow that took Dontaine unaware, I struck him,
careful with my strength because I was more than just Monère strong now. I
caught his unconscious body as it went lax, and carried him inside to the
cabin, laid him gently down on the bed.
One last secret touch of that sun-bright hair. Then I straightened and stepped
out to meet my fate.

TWO

“I SMELL HIS scent on you,” were Halcyon’s words upon my return. I didn’t know
how to answer him. Amber and Gryphon had shared me without jealousy. I’d have
said that Monère men did not know the meaning of the word, but that was not
true. The one person they had been jealous of had been Halcyon. The Demon
Prince’s interest in me had driven them crazy with resentment and fear. I had
no inkling of what Halcyon’s reaction might be to my sleeping with another
man, even if it had been to save us both. Since I wanted to keep Dontaine
alive, I said nothing.

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Halcyon gave a little smile, and again that wave of sadness flowed over me,
through me. “I will not harm him,” he said, and held out his hand to me.
I walked to him, took his hand without hesitation, felt the faintest brush of
those sharp nails across my skin—lethal nails that could cut off a demon’s
head with one deadly swipe—and didn’t flinch. Why should I? If I was to die, I
knew he would make it as quick and as painless as possible. But before I died,
I wanted to know one thing. “How is Gryphon?”
I know. Contradicting myself here, asking him about another lover. But Gryphon
and Amber had come before Halcyon. He did not seem to resent them. Dontaine,
on the other hand, had come after Halcyon. Therein might lie a very big
difference.
“He is well, adjusting to his new existence.” There seemed to be more he
wanted to say but didn’t. He led me instead farther into the forest, away from
the cabin, and I went with him willingly. We walked for a time, no words, but
a wealth of emotion, his emotion, flooded the silence until I could no longer
bear it. “Don’t be sad, Halcyon.”
He led me to a toppled tree fallen long ago, and urged me to sit there on the
trunk. “Hell-cat,” he whispered, his endearment for me, and again I felt that
welling, immense sorrow. “I’m not going to kill you.”
His words were a surprise and a relief to me. “Then why are you grieving?”
“Grieving—how appropriately stated. Oh, Mona Lisa.” He closed his eyes for a
moment as if it pained him to look at me. When his lashes lifted, he looked
into me with more than just his eyes as he feathered the back of his fingers
across the tip of my fangs in a whisper-light caress. “All that my sister said
is true. You have become Damanôen.”
“It sounds pretty,” I said, for a condition that was not. But after the
initial bloodlust that had come welling up with the bursting of my fangs, the
hunger had faded. I felt it still, but only like a faint, nibbling urge. “If
you’re not going to kill me then why are you so sad?” I asked.
“What you feel is what you called it—grief. I’m grieving for what we have
lost.”
“What have we lost?”
“Time,” Halcyon said. “An afterlife of togetherness. You have such great
mental strength, you would have existed for a long time in my realm.” After
Monères died, those with enough psychic power transitioned to Hell and became
demon dead, living there for as long as their mental energy sustained them.
Some of them existed for hundreds of years, like Halcyon.
Something stirred in me, prickled my calm. “Have I lost my afterlife?”
Halcyon gazed at me sadly with eyes the color of dark chocolate. “You are
Damanôen, demon living now. You cannot become demon dead afterward.”
I’d been shortchanged already. As a Mixed Blood, I would have probably only
lived a hundred years, a human’s lifespan instead of the three hundred years
of life most Monère enjoyed if they were not killed before then. Now on top of
that I’d lost the promise of afterlife. It was a devastating blow.
I drew in a deep breath and thought, At least I’m still breathing. A lifetime
had been gained and lost; I was just back where I first started. So you didn’t
really lose anything, I told myself.
Sure.
The ache in my heart said differently.
“Well, at least I’ve got eighty more years of life,” I said.
Another swelling ache of pain from Halcyon.
It made my heart beat faster. “Don’t I? Halcyon, you said you weren’t going to
kill me.” Now that hundreds of demon years had been chopped off of my
existence, the remaining few human decades were even more precious.
He closed his eyes and somehow drew down a light veil so that I was no longer
bathed in his emotions. So that my own started to rise up instead.
“Not now,” he said. Two very innocuous words apart. Strung together like that,
they became very foreboding. Very portentous.
“What the hell do you mean? Not now. So you’re going to kill me later?” I felt
that calmness, that resigned feeling of peace slipping rapidly away from me.

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Fuck that, a voice inside of me shouted, I don’t want to die.
“Calm,” Halcyon murmured and I felt that rising heat within me smooth back
down like turbulent waters soothed. “It will be easier if you remain calm.”
“What will be easier?”
“Controlling the new demon nature you have acquired.” His demon nature. It had
been Halcyon’s blood Mona Louisa had ingested. “How well you can control it
will determine how long you shall live.”
“What do you mean, Halcyon? I’m getting pretty tired of asking all these
questions. Why don’t you just tell me what’s going to happen?”
Like a symphonic swelling, that sadness came wafting out from him again. “It
is something that is better shown,” he said, and like that the grief shut off.
Completely this time, like a limb suddenly chopped off. And in that absence,
my demon bloodlust came rushing back into me like a thirty-foot wave held back
for a time but no longer contained. It smashed down on me. Drowned me in want
and throbbing need.
“Christ!” I gasped. My nails sank down several inches into the tree trunk I’d
unconsciously gripped, my fingertips aching and throbbing just as my teeth had
before my fangs had erupted. I didn’t know if it was because I had shoved them
through hard wood, or if it was because my nails where changing into sharp
dagger tips like Halcyon’s. I didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to see. So I
kept them buried like an ostrich sticking its head in sand, and desperately
fought that wild hunger, that bloodlust that was urging me to pounce on
Halcyon and sink my fangs into him.
I would not be that stupid. Because if I was, forget eighty years, my life
wouldn’t even last eighty seconds. No, no, NO! Do not jump him. But it was
like trying to hang onto an oil-slicked ledge. My grip, my control, was
starting to slip. I was hanging on only by my mental fingertips, slipping,
slipping, starting to fall…
A majestic stag, its antlers spanning almost four feet across, emerged from a
thicket of trees. A wild animal that did not behave like a wild animal, it
came right up to me like a tame pet, his large, liquid eyes calm and tranquil,
his body a contained fountain of blood that called wildly to me.
“Drink,” Halcyon said, and his voice, his command, broke the last strands of
my tenuous control. I fell on the stag like a ravenous beast, which is what I
had become. I plunged my fangs into the deer’s neck with no care, no finesse,
with only greed and crazed need. And drank and drank and drank. Hot glorious
blood gushed down my throat, that pulse of life beating into me, flowing hot
and sweet and coppery good, taking the burning edge off, partly quenching the
overwhelming need so that it no longer overwhelmed thought. So that I could
think once again, become acutely aware of what I was doing. Become horrified
by it.
I pulled my fangs out from the meaty flesh with a wet, sucking slurp, and fell
with a cry away from the animal onto the ground, my hand covering my mouth.
Now normal nails, I noted in one corner of my mind while I sucked in air,
feeling my stomach, full of blood, churning with horror and distress.
Blood spurted out in tiny gushes from the stag’s neck, a gentle outflow.
Halcyon put his mouth over the ragged bite wound—what I had done—and lapped up
the blood until it no longer flowed.
“Our saliva can both thin blood and thicken it,” Halcyon said, drawing away.
“When you are done feeding, simply picture the blood clotting, and it will
stop.”
As if responding to a silent command, the big animal lumbered calmly away,
disappearing into the forest.
“If you feed your hunger instead of fighting it, you will be able to control
it better. It does not take much blood.” With a natural grace that was a part
of him, Halcyon caught my hand and pulled me up from the ground to perch once
more on the tree trunk. I sat there numbly with my body trembling, my fangs
stained red with blood.
“Your control,” he said calmly, bluntly. “That will determine if you live or
die.”

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Oh. I even understood the reasoning. The Monère. We were a people that lived
in secret among the humans. Anything that threatened that hidden coexistence,
say a wild Mixed Blood boy raiding and killing a human farmer’s domestic
livestock…he would be eliminated in a blink. Anything that stood out, that
called attention to us like that would not be tolerated or allowed to live.
The equivalent of that, in the demon dead’s case, would be my fangs. That
would draw a lot of attention. Because, quite simply, the Monère did not have
fangs in our human form. Only the demon dead did. Which boded ill for me
because I still had them. Fangs. As in long, sharp, pointy canine teeth
protruding from my mouth. They would cause quite a stir among the Monère if
they were seen. It would make them wonder how I’d acquired that demon
trait…and whether I had other traits of theirs, like their greater strength,
which I did. Both explanations—Mortal Draining (me—my fault) and drinking a
demon’s blood (Mona Louisa’s fault)—would get me killed. The first one by the
Monère Queens, because if they knew what I could do, I’d be too dangerous for
them to tolerate…or risk having my ability spread to others. The second would
get me just as dead by the demons, who had already wiped out an entire Queen’s
force to keep their secret quiet.
The problem was, now that my fangs were out I didn’t know how to make them go
away. And Dontaine—Christ!—he’d already seen them, striking a bolt of fear
through me like lightning. Don’t think of him. Don’t think of him. Because if
I could sense Halcyon’s emotions, he could probably sense mine. I hoped and
prayed that he couldn’t read my thoughts, though. That he did not know that
Dontaine had already seen my fangs. Shit! I had thought of it again.
“I can’t read your thoughts,” Halcyon said, which of course made me believe
quite the opposite. “Your face, the way you stiffened. It’s easy enough for me
to read from your expression that you just thought of something you did not
wish me to know…and that you feared that I might.”
Okay, I could buy that explanation. Horace the steward and Bernard Fruge,
Dontaine’s father, had read me like that once.
Halcyon paused. A human might have sighed, but he was demon dead, he did not
need to breathe. And they rarely did so unless it was to speak or to scent our
fear or arousal. “When you felt my sadness,” he said, “I was calming your
demon. I can help you that way if I choose, because it is my blood residing in
you.”
“You linked us together.”
Halcyon nodded.
“Are we linked now?”
“No. I have withdrawn my aid. You stand by just your control alone, and it is
not bad.”
But is it good enough to let me live? was the million-dollar question.
Apparently so. He hadn’t sliced off my head yet. It seemed for the moment that
I was good. But I wanted to know beyond the moment. “How do you…” I gestured
to my fangs. “How do you make them go away?”
“In time, you will be able to make them appear at will or suppress their
emergence if you wish. For now, they will subside when I leave you. It is my
demon presence that pulls forth your own.”
“And my nails. Will they become like yours? Or my eyes…will they glow red?”
Like Halcyon’s did with rage—flickering fiery red as if the very flames of
Hell were ignited in him.
“I do not know. What you are now, what you will become, no one can predict.
What you did…no one has done that before.”
His words left a leaden feeling in my stomach. As if I had swallowed down a
bar of steel, and it weighed me down like a dropped anchor.
I’d been an oddity before—the first Mixed Blood Monère Queen. Now I was even
odder yet with not just human blood mixed in with the Monère, but with demon
spirit added in, too. Totally bizarre. And from what he was saying, I might
become even more so…if I managed to live that long. Great. Just freaking
great.
“Your father called what I did Mortal Draining. I got the impression that

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others had that ability in the past, that I’m not the first one to do this
thing.”
“No. But that you were able to become Damanôen that way…” Halcyon shrugged.
“No one else has ever done so.”
“What…they usually just drank down demon blood, right?”
“That is correct.”
“And you killed them all. That’s what your sister, Lucinda, said. I believe
her exact phrasing was: My kind hunted and killed things like you long ago.
Real inspiring words, you know.”
“You are being sarcastic, very like yourself. That is a good sign.” He spoke
totally without humor. In utmost seriousness.
“Answer the question, Halcyon.” And because he was the ruler of Hell—even if I
was not going there, dammit!—I tacked on at the end, “Please.”
“You are asking why we killed off all others like you in the past, but are
letting you live?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m asking.”
“Most Monère who became that way did so through blood rape as Mona Louisa did
with me.” Blood rape. It seemed to be an actual phrase used by demons, not
something I’d just thought up in my head. “Those demons would of course tend
to kill those who had violated them so, if they were able. Other Damanôen were
killed either because they could not control themselves—they went rampaging
mad—”
I must have gone sheet-white, because Halcyon hastened to add, “But you have
not shown that tendency.”
“It’s early yet,” I whispered.
“It manifests fairly quickly,” Halcyon said, his voice once again that
soothing, gentle tone. Its brief effect on me was totally ruined by his next
words. “Others like you were eliminated simply because they were able to sense
us.”
I swallowed. “A living demon detector, able to sense your presence. I can see
how other demons would not like that. So, they were hunted down and killed off
because of that.”
“Yes,” Halcyon said softly. “There were never many Damanôen, and the few that
existed were often quickly killed. Knowledge of them, that they once existed,
has been lost.”
“More like carefully contained, I’d say.”
Halcyon nodded, acknowledging this. “Lost, contained—however you put it, the
fact remains that it has become a secret knowledge among the demons, erased
from Monère awareness.”
“And you and your father would like to keep it that way.”
“Yes. Both my father and I would like to keep it that way.”
Circling us back to that crucial question: Of whether or not I had good enough
control to keep that secret hidden. Not just the drinking demon blood thing,
but that Monère could become like demons while yet living. Fangs popping out
tended to give that away.
I didn’t know how to ask this. Couldn’t bring myself to ask him straight out:
Will you kill me if I draw too much attention to myself?
I said instead, “Halcyon, what will we do?”
His answer surprised me. “There are two ways we can handle this. We can try
and hide it. Or we can try the opposite—not trying to hide it. Diverting them
instead from the real reason for your demon-like change.”
“If I have a choice in this, I’m all for not trying to hide it. I think I
would fail in the endeavor to hide it,” I said honestly. Fail and die. And now
that I knew I would not be enjoying a long afterlife, I sure as heck did not
want to depart this life anytime sooner than I had to. “What do you propose?”
“That I claim you publicly as my mate ten days from now at the next Council
meeting. Others will presume that any changes, any strangeness you manifest,
even those of becoming more demonic…they will assume that it comes from our
union.”
Diversion. Creating smoke elsewhere to hide the true cause. “I think that’s a

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brilliant idea, Halcyon.”
Turmoil flashed in his eyes.
“What is it? What’s wrong, Halcyon?”
His voice, when he spoke, was pitched low. “I do not want it just to be false
diversion. I want it to be true. I want you to be my mate in truth.”
“Oh.” One little word to express everything that I suddenly understood. He
loved me. Wanted our union to be not just official but real, and feared that
it would not be so. That I would agree to it simply to save my life.
Where I once would have hesitated, here I did not. Because I’d come to learn
that life could be fleeting. That love was precious where you found it,
something to be cherished. Something to grab ahold of with both hands and
one’s entire heart. “Yes, Halcyon. I will be your mate. In truth, in love,
with everything that I am…even the demon part of me that is you.”
He looked into my eyes, deep into me, and laughed joyously. I was suddenly in
his arms, and that remaining thirst for blood that throbbed in me still,
became channeled into hunger of another kind. One that involved flesh, yes.
But not to eat it. Well, at least not literally.
I felt the tide of need shift within me and welcomed it with delight. With
eager hands that roamed and sought and found smooth skin, muscled flesh. With
trembling heart that wanted, wanted, wanted him. His love, his laughter. That
look in his eyes as he caressed me gently with the back of his knuckles.
“Mona Lisa.”
“Yes, love me.”
“I do.”
“Show me,” I said, my fingers flying, unbuttoning his clothes, unzipping mine.
He stood there docilely, letting me undress him, watching as I shed my own
clothes. But his eyes…his eyes were anything but docile or tame. They burned
with need, with sexual heat, with heart’s desire.
Naked, we came together. And that first touch of flesh to flesh shuddered a
cry from me, a sigh from him. He laid me upon the ground, came down on top of
me, and I opened my heart and body to him.
“You are mine,” he said, his chocolate brown eyes burning down into mine,
watching me, connecting us that way. Watching me as he pushed slowly into me
and connected us that way, too. He entered me, slid luxuriously in, and we
both groaned. My eyes fluttered shut.
“No. Look at me, Hell-cat. Let me see you. Let me know you. Let me inside of
you. Yes,” he whispered as he stroked within me, his face, his body, his eyes
a breath above mine, giving us an intimacy that was as deep and poignant as
how he felt moving within me. “You hold me so tight, so warmly. My home,” he
said, and with another wet slide, pushed back into me. “You are my home.”
Gentle, so gentle he was. And then his eyes slid down, fell upon the side of
my neck. Then, and only then, did I become aware that his strokes in and out
of me…they were timed to the flux and flow of my heart. As my blood pumped
within me, so did he time his movements within me. My pulse quickened at that
realization. At the knowledge of where he looked, what he desired. As it did
so, his own rhythm accelerated.
Pleasure had weakened me, making me yielding, lax. Making me a soft, receptive
sheath for his piercing flesh—a deep penetrating blade that plunged in and
pulled out. Now with that one look, that caressing touch upon my neck,
everything tightened in a dark and dangerous, convulsive thrill. Halcyon
groaned at my tighter clutch, his rhythm thrown off for one faltering second
at that gripping pleasure. That inner tightness and awareness. “Ah…sweet
Hades.”
He pulled out, plunged back into me, his movements sharper, a touch more
forceful. Less harmonious. More invading.
Blood. I became so aware of it beating within me. Coursing in me as he moved
within me. No longer a soft pulsing flow, but one gaining speed and momentum,
beginning to pound. Another dark thrill chased through me, tightened me.
Blood. I suddenly desired it between us. And so did he.
“Drink,” I said. And tilted back my head, offering him my neck.

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“Hell-cat.” Just those two words spoken in a rough, velvet rasp. His head
lowered as he accepted what I offered, as he took what we both needed. His
soft lips pressed over my beating pulse. The tips of his sharp fangs pressed
against my skin, caressed it. I shivered. Groaned. My hands buried themselves
in the thickness of his hair, held him to me there. One stroke, two—sharp
fangs gliding over soft skin. And then he pierced me. And with that first
taste of my blood, the dynamics of our lovemaking changed. As my red life
flowed into him, what was soft and sweet became darker, more dangerous.
He growled, his body hardening as every muscle tensed. Then he unleashed
himself, a sudden, hard pounding force, ramming himself into me, and I cried
out in ecstasy.
“More,” I demanded, “more!” And he gave me more. He drove into me as he drank
me down, as if the speed with which he pumped himself increased the speed with
which my blood pumped into him. Maybe it did. All I know is that I wound
tighter and tighter as he pistoned himself in and out of me with almost
frenzied fury while he gulped me down, propelling me upward until I shattered
into a million pieces of light. A million pieces of rapture.
I saw him above me, his skin dark gold like a gilded angel, as he called forth
my inner light—the moon’s rays that dwelt in all her children. The night
filled with the light that glowed from my skin, that burst from me as I burst
apart, convulsing, shattering in climactic bliss. And above me, I felt not
light but power swell from him. A burst of energy as he seized above me and
pulsed within me, splashing his liquid heat into me, a small return for the
fluid he had taken from me. He threw back his head and roared his release, his
fangs crimson bright with my blood. And I felt the exchange equal. Was more
than happy with it as he collapsed on top of me and let me bear his full
weight, a pleasure all to itself, to feel a man sprawled on top of you like
that with every muscle lax, all desire sated, every need fulfilled.
When my light faded back into me and darkness covered us once more, Halcyon
turned his head and licked my wound closed so that it no longer bled. Easing
out of me, he rolled to the side, pulling me with him to snuggle against him,
his eyes warm upon my face. “Hell-cat,” he said softly.
“You didn’t use any of your mental powers.”
“I wanted our first real time together to be just you and me. No mental
enhancement, no question of compulsion. Just me, my body, pleasing you.”
I ran my hands over that body, enjoying the feel of it—that smooth skin, those
light muscles. The strong shoulders, powerful arms.
I realized that my fangs were gone. Just normal teeth once more.
“It certainly pleased me,” I purred, whispering a kiss against his lips now
that it was safe. Now that there was no bloodlust. “You please me. Your mind,
your body. Separate or together.” He kissed me back, pressed warm lips to
mine.
A sound suddenly intruded, pulling him back from me, rolling him away. He
moved so quickly, they both did, that I didn’t realize at first what was
happening, just saw dark hair against light hair, and caught the quick flash
of a blade. I heard Halcyon growl, heard the other man curse, and realized
that it was my master of arms, Dontaine, my other lover, awake and enraged,
his green eyes flashing with murderous intent.
I screamed, “Dontaine, no! Halcyon, stop! Both of you!”
They grappled together, grunting, growling, fighting. An entangled mass
rolling on the ground, heeding me not.
“Stop it!” I screamed.
Dontaine was suddenly flung away. He sailed through the air for a dozen feet
before hitting a tree with a hard thunk, branches snapping and breaking
beneath his weight as he dropped to the ground. He jumped to his feet and
rushed Halcyon again like a crazed bull, his shirt slashed, blood staining it.
I’d worried about Halcyon’s jealousy and his anger. I hadn’t thought of
Dontaine’s. He went after the Demon Prince, armed with just a silver dagger
and mindless rage.
Halcyon stood poised like a matador as the bigger warrior charged him. His

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slender body was tense, almost eager, his eyes hard and gleaming, with a cruel
little smile on his face. His lethal nails were curved and ready at his side,
Dontaine’s blood adorning the tips like red fingernail polish.
He held no malice toward me. That was what I had told Gryphon about Halcyon
the first time I had met him. I hadn’t feared the Demon Prince, then. That was
not true now. Malice emanated from Halcyon in thick, palpable waves as he
watched and waited for Dontaine with that eager gleam in his eyes.
“That’s it, warrior,” he crooned. “Come to me.”
I didn’t let him. I tackled Dontaine, gasping as we hit the ground hard.
Dontaine twisted, protecting me as we rolled. A nice sentiment, a natural
instinct, but not what I wanted. What I wanted right now was obedience from
him. I ended on top of Dontaine.
“Mona Lisa, are you all right?” He sounded concerned. He sounded sane,
intelligent, reasonable. Not at all like a suicidal idiot.
I snarled and grabbed him by the shirtfront. “I command you as your Queen to
stop! Right now. No fighting!”
He yielded, in his eyes, in his body beneath mine. But not in words. I slowly
peeled myself off of him and rose to my feet. “Say it, Dontaine.” My voice was
hard, flat, and brittle. As brittle as how I felt.
“No fighting,” he said and rose to his feet. His body trembled as he looked
over my head, behind me. Not in fear, but in anger. In rage.
Carefully, I stepped back to the side, positioning myself so I could see them
both. And understood immediately what had set Dontaine’s anger ablaze once
more. Halcyon’s nakedness. That golden skin was uncut and dry…all but his
shaft that glistened with wetness, coated by my juice where he had sheathed
himself inside of me.
“Halcyon, could you dress, please?” I asked. Walking back to where my own
clothes law strewn on the ground, I pulled them on quickly. Dontaine stood
where I’d left him, like a dog straining against an invisible leash, held back
only because of that restraint. No less savage because of it.
I went back to him. Touched him soothingly. “You knew Halcyon was my lover. I
told you that, and you took the news calmly. Why did you attack him now?”
“Because he infected you! You must stay away from him lest he infect you even
more.”
Fear spiked through me as Dontaine’s words betrayed to Halcyon the very thing
I had tried to keep hidden from him. God, how tired I was of being afraid.
One of my new abilities was a falcon’s clarity of vision, Gryphon’s gift to
me. To see clear down to one’s soul. I turned Dontaine’s face down to me,
looked into his eyes, and saw the real truth in him. “Dontaine. It is not just
fear for me that made you try to kill the High Prince.”
Fine tremors shook Dontaine. Heated his eyes with a tangle of emotions. “True.
I want to kill the Demon Prince because you turned from me as a lover, yet you
continue to accept him.”
“He is safe,” I whispered, a part of me crying at the pain I saw in those
eyes. “He cannot be affected by what is in me. I do not fear for him as I do
for you.”
“And he cannot get you pregnant as I can,” Dontaine said bitterly. Another
harsh truth that I could not deny. Halcyon was demon dead. He could not bring
forth life. Dontaine, on the other hand, was descended from a potent fertile
line, rare among the Monère, and usually prized because of it. But not so with
me. His potency, in my eyes, was a huge detriment. I could not risk becoming
pregnant, infected as I was with demon darkness.
All of Dontaine’s strengths were detriments with me. First, the unusual Half
Change state that he was capable of achieving, arresting his change halfway
into his wolf form so he became that terrible, horrendous embodiment of human
legend—werewolf. A gift usually prized for its rareness. I had shied from its
ugliness—the part-man, part-animal hybrid. Monstrous, I’d called it. Not an
ability I wanted to gain for myself. I could gain others’ gifts by having sex
with them, and I could pass my gifts along to them in turn. That was how I had
acquired Gryphon’s keenness of vision, and some of Amber’s great strength. In

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exchange, they had obtained from me the ability to withstand sunlight, to not
burn beneath its hot rays.
Sex and Basking—a Queen’s ability to call down the renewing rays of the moon
and share it with her people. That was what the Monère society was based upon.
Or perhaps it was even simpler than that. Maybe it was just based on power:
Warriors gaining it by Basking and having sex with Queens; Queens gaining it
by sleeping with her men—a great many, varied number of them. One big
fuck-fest of power and pleasure.
I’d rejected Dontaine once. And again a second time after he’d offered what he
saw as the most valuable part of himself—his potency, his ability to give me a
baby—when he’d found me grieving at the knowledge that there would be no
living remembrance of Gryphon, that I wasn’t pregnant with his child as I had
hoped. I’d hurt not only Dontaine’s heart, but even more unforgivably, I’d
pricked his male pride. I saw it all there in his eyes, and didn’t know what
to do about it. He was too angry to heed his words. Had in fact spilled out in
a heated rush the very knowledge I’d knocked him unconscious to keep
hidden—that he was aware of my demon infection, as he called it.
I shouldn’t have pulled my punch, worrying about my strength when I’d knocked
him out. I should have hit him harder, kept him out of it longer. Maybe knock
some more sense into him. He could scarce have any less of it.
I turned away from him to plead with Halcyon instead. “Don’t kill him.”
Menace still emanated from the Demon Prince. His words, though, were calm. “If
he restrains himself, I will not. Mostly because you will need him.”
His words drew Dontaine’s attention as nothing else could have. “What do you
mean?” Dontaine demanded roughly.
“Your Queen will need a source of blood near her at all times. Even when she
learns to call wild creatures to her, fresh animal blood will not be so easy
to keep at hand. She will need someone to drink from should her bloodlust
stir. A little drink of blood to sate the hunger, and she gains much control
over it. Would you be willing to let her feed from you?”
“Halcyon—”
My Demon Prince turned to look at me. “Hell-cat, what you have cannot be
passed to him in that way. You cannot ‘infect’ him, as you fear.”
And what the Demon Prince offered to Dontaine was clearly a balm to the
warrior’s wounded pride—to be needed by his Queen.
“She can have anything of me that she desires,” Dontaine said. And like that,
his aggression began to fade. He sheathed his dagger…while I wanted to plunge
it into him, so pissed off was I by how badly I’d bungled things with my new
lover…and how easily Halcyon had fixed them. But he was the ruler of Hell,
after all. Soothing one Monère warrior’s wounded pride had to be a piece of
cake compared to handling a realm full of dangerous, bloodthirsty demons.
It was my first lesson in rulership. And I accepted it, bitter though it
tasted in my mouth. “Thank you, Dontaine.”
My eyes flashed gratitude to Halcyon, or at least tried to, for restraining
himself. For not slaughtering Dontaine. For handling the situation without
bloodshed.
“I will leave you now,” Halcyon said. The barest brush of those sharp nails—a
sweet and dangerous caress across my cheek—and he started to walk away.
“So soon?” Disappointment coated my voice as I followed after him. “You just
got here,” I said almost plaintively.
He stopped, turned around. “Hell-cat,” he murmured, and I felt the mental
brush of his power, invisible lips pressing against mine in a brief, phantom
kiss. “I am being prudent. I expended a lot of energy. It would be wiser for
me to go now and recover. I will tarry longer next time, I promise.”
I could not argue with him for being careful. The last time he had come here
had ended disastrously for the both of us. “How will you get back to the
portal?” I asked. The nearest one that I knew of was in New Orleans, almost an
hour’s drive away.
“The same way I got here. By car.”
“You took a taxi?” I asked.

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“Yes, and he waits for me patiently by the roadside where I had him stop when
I first sensed you.”
“You bespelled him,” I said. “In which case, the cab will still likely be
there. But this is my land, Halcyon.” Or would it now be our land, I wondered,
when we were mated? I pushed the thought away for later examination, and
concentrated on the important matter here and now. “The last time you came
here, you left gravely injured. We will see you safely to the car.”
“I would enjoy your company,” Halcyon said with a smile, and held out his hand
to me. I took it, my hand slipping naturally into his, and walked
companionably beside him. The barest hesitation, and then Dontaine joined us,
too. And if it was a little awkward for a moment—holding hands with my demon
lover, my Monère lover walking beside me—it was but a momentary discomfort
that quickly passed. Light or dark, skin dusted gold or alabaster white, we
were still, all of us, children of the moon. And she beamed her benevolent
rays down upon us as we moved through the woods with soundless ease. The
direction was easy to find. Just cast your senses wide and listen for the
human heartbeat. There, to the north edge of the woods.
“You do not seem to resent me,” Dontaine said, and though he hadn’t addressed
his comment specifically, it was clear to whom he was speaking. For a moment,
our moonlit harmony faltered.
“You are of the light, I am from the dark,” Halcyon answered. His words flowed
smooth and gentle, restoring the rhythm, continuing the harmony. “You dwell
among the living, I among the dead. I cannot often be here. We both love the
same woman, and are loved by her. She is not one who opens her heart lightly,
or to those undeserving. And I am not so petty as to demand that she love only
me. We are of different worlds. That she opens her heart to include me is
already a gift beyond measure. No, I do not resent you. I am grateful to you.
It eases me to know that you shall look after her during the times I cannot.
That you will be with her in the times I cannot be. You treasure her as I do
and will guard her well, keep her alive for us all.”
Though he was dead, and that organ of life, his heart, dead within him also,
love flowed from Halcyon in abundance, in wise generosity, in a river of
plentitude.
“My lord,” Dontaine said, bowing his head down in a deep gesture of respect.
“You have my promise. I shall guard her with my life.”
Halcyon smiled and stopped at the treeline where the forest ended and a
wild-grassed meadow began. The cab was parked along the roadside twenty yards
distant. He raised my hand, pressed a kiss there.
“Mea ena,” Halcyon murmured tenderly. “Stay safe for me.” Then he was gone,
striding across the meadow. We watched until the cab drove away. An odd sight
to see—the ruler of Hell being driven away in a taxi.
“He called you his wife.”
My heart tumbled a bit at the word Dontaine used—wife. I substituted it for
something I was much more comfortable with. “I agreed to be his mate. To have
it publicly acknowledged at High Court this next session.”
“And me?” Dontaine asked.
Halcyon had given his blessing and his assurance that I could not pass the
demon darkness inside me to Dontaine through sex.
Dontaine had given his word that he would protect me with his life, with his
blood, whatever I desired of him. So generous were the men that I loved. How
could I be any less so?
I took his hand—so different it was from the one I had just held, with nails
blunt and short, skin pale, palm callused—a warrior’s hand. Yet they both felt
right in mine. With our fingers clasped together, I turned toward home with
lightness in my heart and a smile on my face.
“Dontaine, do you happen to know what a condom is?”
He shook his head.
“Let me tell you about them.”

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THREE

I AWOKE TO bright daylight with a wolf’s painful howl still echoing in my ear.
An animal’s call normally wouldn’t wake me from a sound slumber. We were
surrounded by a vast acreage of woods and swampland, after all. But it hadn’t
been an anonymous cry I had heard. It had been Wiley’s, the Mixed Blood boy no
older than fourteen or fifteen who had grown up wild in the swamp. His howl
had vibrated with rage and fear, its sound like that of a wild animal caught
in a trap.
I threw on jeans and T-shirt, secured my daggers, one silver, the other not,
and crept down the long-winding staircase, avoiding all the creaky spots until
I reached the front door. The others slept on undisturbed, and I did not call
them because the sunlight that fell softly upon my skin would burn theirs. An
hour under its rays would redden their skin. Four hours under it, and they
would die. But not I. My one-quarter mixed human heritage ensured that while I
had all the Monère’s strengths, I had none of their weaknesses. Besides, with
the sun high in the sky, I had nothing to fear. The most dangerous threats to
me—another Monère or demon dead—were all tucked away in darkness, caught up in
their dreams. I wondered for a moment if demons dreamed. Wondered if I hadn’t
dreamed, myself, imagining that cry. Then it came again. The long, mournful
howl of a wolf in distress. Wiley.
I ran east, from where the sound drifted, and covered the distance quickly in
loping bounds and unchecked speed. I found him by his heartbeat, pounding
rapidly, half-hidden behind a fallen tree trunk, his wrists and ankles bound
by ropes. He grew tense when he saw me, and twisted wildly, making muffled
sounds under the gag tied over his mouth.
“Shhh, Wiley. It’s okay, it’s just me,” I said, trying to calm him, but he
only struggled harder. I frowned as I approached him, and wondered if human
hunters had done this? If so, why? The Mixed Blood boy was dressed in clothes
I had bought for him, wearing at least the trappings of civilization. He was
not half-naked or as obviously wild as he had been when we had first found
him. His hair had even been trimmed. By Tersa, no doubt. Why, then, would
someone have tied him up like this? And how had a human managed it even? For
that matter, why had mere ropes held him? He was more than human strong, young
though he was. Then part of the puzzle became clear when he twisted and I
caught sight of the silver handcuffs half-hidden beneath the thick rope.
Silver weakened the Monère. Made them only human strong.
Not humans. Other Monère, I realized too late.
Something struck me on the back of the head.
Pain. Splinters of white. Then nothing as darkness swallowed me.

WHEN I AWOKE, it was to a raging storm. Not just the one in my head, where I
had been struck a painful blow, but a real one. A blinding bolt of lightning
split the sky, followed almost immediately by a booming crash of thunder. It
was almost as if the heavenly gods were having a temper tantrum, a scary one.
Fat raindrops pelted the metal roof of the car I was in, and thick sheets of
rain hurled itself against the windows. The noise from that was almost as
nauseating as the deafening thunder had been.
I was laid out on the backseat of a car, with metal restraints biting into my
wrists. Ropes tied my feet together. Fucking great discoveries, along with the
headache. I didn’t know how much time had elapsed, or if the handcuffs were
silver or dark demon metal. The first I could break. Maybe even the second
now. If I was bound with the latter, I would find out soon enough.
Two men—two Monère—were in the front seats. I knew this not by how they
dressed, because oddly enough they were dressed like humans—less formal. They
risked daylight casually, also like humans. From the back they looked like two
ordinary men. But I felt their presence, their power, with that unique sensing
we had of like to like. The driver was the stronger of the two, with his dark
hair cut short and layered in a contemporary fashion. The one beside him

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emanated less power, felt younger, actually, in a way I couldn’t explain,
although both looked like big men from the back.
Wiley. What had they done with him? With that thought, and a simple flexing of
my wrists, I broke free of the handcuffs—only silver, I saw. The ropes around
my ankles snapped like threads, and I was reaching for the driver with mayhem
and maybe murder on my mind, depending on the answers I beat out of him, when
the other man turned and looked at me.
He was a boy, or rather a young man around my age, in his early twenties. A
beautiful one at that, with a long and lean face cut with high cheekbones,
framed dramatically by a curtain of dark, longish hair. He looked model
pretty, like he should have been gracing the cover of a fashion magazine or
maybe flirting with giggling girls in college. Not kidnapping a woman.
Soft brown eyes stared at me, startled, arresting my forward lunge. Something
about those eyes, or maybe the young power I felt emanating from him…Whatever
it was, something about the innocence I saw there checked my murderous intent.
“Dad, she’s awake.”
Now “Dad” I would have gladly pounded on. He would have been an equal match
for me. But not the boy. I opened the door and jumped from the car. Because of
the blinding sheets of rain, the vehicle had slowed enough to make the
maneuver less dangerous than it might have been at a higher speed. I landed on
my feet running, drenched in an instant. There was just flat land and the
highway cutting through it, no other cars ahead or behind. The sun had just
set, with only a few rays of lingering light, stealing my biggest advantages
from me—daylight and human witnesses.
True night would fall soon, making it much more likely for them to pursue me.
Like a bad thought, I heard the car screech to a stop and the doors open. Yup,
they were coming after me. But then I fully expected they would. My capture
during the daytime had to have been carefully planned—keeping to the shade
until they snatched me, and then suffering the bite of the sun, which they had
to have felt discomfort from, even through the tinted windows of the car.
I ran all-out into the nearby woods, the silver handcuffs still hanging from
my wrists. I’d only broken the chain between them. I tore the separate pieces
of metal off me and flung them away. A quick glance down my side told me they
had taken my daggers. No weapons. But that was okay. My strength was weapon
enough.
They closed the distance between us, moving faster than I was because they
tapped into their animal selves—used it to fuel their strength while still in
their upright forms, to enhance their senses, increase their speed. I could
have done something similar had I not worried that attempting it would bring
that tiny demon piece in me out to the fore. It shouldn’t, but the boy’s
face…His soft doe eyes flashed in my memory’s eye and I knew I couldn’t take
the chance. I didn’t know the parameters or triggers of what I held inside of
me well enough to risk it. So I ran unaided. And they inevitably caught up to
me as I hit what had probably once been a mild trickling river, but was now a
frothing mass of seething water that had almost overswelled its banks. It was
more than twenty feet across, something I could have probably jumped.
Probably. But I was loathe to do so. The current was strong, and my swimming
skills lousy. I turned, ran parallel down along the bank, looking for a
narrower point to jump across.
The father tackled me. I rammed an elbow back into his face and kicked free,
springing to my feet, which brought me face-to-face with the boy. Maybe it was
the pretty face or the innocence I’d glimpsed in those eyes even though they
were no longer that soft, melting brown but a sharp piercing gray now, the
eyes of his beast. For whatever silly reason, I hesitated to strike him. Fool,
I. Because I saw then what I hadn’t seen before in the car—a black gun
holstered at his side, a dagger strapped to his waist, bracelet-bands circling
his wrists, protecting his forearms, what warriors of old might have worn
centuries ago. He was someone trained in the art of combat, and I should have
taken him out, because that very modern gun he wore tipped the advantage over
to their side. But he didn’t reach for the gun or jump me as he could have. We

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froze there for a second, in arm’s reach of each other.
“Don’t run,” he said with his hands splayed harmlessly out in front of him.
“We won’t hurt you.”
It was his words that broke the spell. He lied. They’d already hurt me. They’d
knocked me unconscious, and the blow had not been light. They’d snatched me
from my home. Taken me from my people.
I turned and kicked his father—he’d been gathering himself up off the
ground—and knocked him back down. I saw surprise flash in the big guy’s eyes.
What? Had he thought the elbow I’d rammed into him had been an accident, that
the daggers I’d worn had been only a pretty fashion statement? Had he thought
I’d just stand there and let them recapture me like a silly, helpless female?
I darted past him, running upstream. Less than a dozen feet away, a hand
caught my arm, and I knew it was the boy who gripped me. Doe eyes or not, I
had to get out of there. Big daddy was not far behind him. I turned, struck
out at him, and just met air. I struck again, but it was like shadow boxing. A
slight shift, a subtle turn of his body, and he slipped out of reach. Each
time I turned to flee, his hand grasped me again. Son of a bitch. I had to get
in closer to him. Close enough to hit him, make him go down, shake him off me
so I could escape. I spun back around into him, and my arm, which he had a
solid grip on, unexpectedly twisted back and captured his in turn.
My touch seemed to shock him still. As if the feel of my body flush against
his scattered all his thoughts, rendered useless all his training. I kneed him
in the groin, saw the pain flash in his eyes. Saw him go down, and turned to
run. And found myself still shackled to him by that hand firmly grasping my
forearm. That hand that would not let go of me.
We tussled on the ground along the bank, fighting each other one-handed, our
other hands locking us together. We were both handicapped, and not just by the
loss of one arm. We fought each other, but not with the real intent of hurting
each other.
Let me tell you: You can’t fight that way or you will lose. Sure enough, I
suddenly felt the ground crumble beneath me, and found myself tumbling down
over the edge of the bank. The lower half of my body splashed into the
swift-moving water. The only thing that kept me tethered was the forearm grasp
we had on each other.
“Give me your other hand. I’ll pull you back up,” he said, reaching his free
hand out to me. I almost took the offered hand. It was the sight of his father
coming up the bank beside him that made me change my mind and reminded me once
more: Enemies. They’re your enemies.
I let go of him, and with a powerful levered twist, broke free of his grasp.
Had he latched onto me with both hands, I wouldn’t have been able to do that.
But it was only a one-handed grip, his other hand stretched out to me. In a
one-handed hold, you always have a weak link—the thumb. A hard, concentrated
twist there at that point, and it gave as I knew it would. With nothing
tethering me anymore, I fell into the raging water.
The cold shocked a gasp out of me. I had a moment to see the boy jump into the
water after me, no hesitation. A moment to worry about him, wonder if he could
swim. Wonder if he would float, loaded down as he was with weapons and clothes
and those heavy metal armbands. And then the water took me, pulled me under.
Washed all thoughts away as I sank down into the icy cold depths.
It was deep, deeper than my feet could touch. And it kept me sucked down for
an interminably long time, sweeping me along in its powerful current. I bobbed
up, broke the surface, and gasped in air. Tried to doggy paddle—my version of
swimming—in an attempt to keep my head above water. It would have been
adequate in a placid swimming pool. Not so in fast-moving white-water rapids.
I bashed up against a rock and went down again. Hit another rock underwater
with stunning force. I hung there dazed, suspended deep in the water for a few
slow-ticking minutes, letting the current take me where it willed, until the
need for air tickled my throat. I felt my feet scrape against bottom and
pushed up, broke the surface, took in sweet air.
“Here, my lady!”

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I turned and saw the boy cutting through the water toward me with strong,
powerful strokes. This time I was willing to be rescued by him. Would have
waited for him had I been able to, but he was too distant, over twenty
terribly long feet away, and I was too weak a swimmer to stay afloat for that
long. The current pulled me down under again, but this time I fought it. When
I surfaced again, he was closer, his eyes that sharp, fierce gray.
“Hold on,” he cried.
I tried to. Kicking to stay afloat, I reached for him. Before he could grasp
me, our course shifted. We rounded a bend—God, how swiftly we traveled—and I
smashed up against another big boulder and went down. I felt the pain
reverberate throughout my entire body, felt all the breath whoosh out of me,
and tried to grab onto the damn rock. But the slippery, mossy surface was
impossible to hold on to, and the current sped me away in an underwater
tumble. Dazed and disoriented, I released my last few bubbles of air, watched
which direction they floated, and followed them up, kicking and moving my arms
sluggishly until I broke the surface.
I sucked in air, blinked wildly to clear my vision, and felt a hand grab ahold
of one of my flailing arms. “Gotcha!”
Sweeter words, I’d never heard.
An arm came around the front of me, pulling me back against a hip, floating me
up in the water in a lifeguard’s grip. “Just hang on,” he said.
I took him at his word. My hands clamped down on that arm, holding him
securely to me. It uncomfortably pressed the thick metal wristbands he wore
into the tender flesh below my breast, but comfort didn’t matter so much as
keeping us together. If he lost me again, I would drown.
I felt his body surge forward as he scissor-kicked, moving us slowly through
the water while the current tried to tear me away—how strong it was. I was
like a deadweight, something he struggled to pull along.
“What can I do?” I asked.
“Can you kick?”
I didn’t answer him, just proceeded to do so. And it helped, gave added
momentum to his one-handed strokes. He moved us across the frothy water at an
angle diagonal to the current. Our progress was sluggish compared to how fast
we were being swept downriver, but inch by inch, we cut across the stream.
Miles passed by before we finally reach the river’s edge.
I felt his body twist, reach up for something, and we came to a jarring halt.
The force of the water suddenly increased twentyfold, pulling my body past
him, trying to tear me from his grasp. But he didn’t let go, and neither did
I, even when I was swept beneath the water. I held onto that arm, felt the
water rushing over me, heard the frothy force of it beating above me in that
odd quiet-loudness that comes when you’re completely submerged.
I was no longer sandwiched between his hip and arm. Just held by his hand that
gripped my shirt, nothing more substantial than that. It was really my hold
now on his arm that kept us anchored together. If I let go, my T-shirt would
likely rip and I would be pulled back into the rapids once more.
I didn’t let go. Not even when time passed and I still remained underwater,
unable to breathe. His arm strained and trembled. Slowly, with hard and
painful exertion, he hauled me out of the water. I took in an explosive breath
as soon as my mouth broke the surface, gulped in both air and water, and
started to cough.
“Grab the branch!” he yelled.
I blinked the water from my eyes, still coughing water from my lungs, and saw
his lined, strained face, his arms bulging with the effort of hanging onto me,
a wet and heavy deadweight still caught in the river’s powerful grip. He was
hanging onto the trunk of a fallen tree half-toppled into the river, his white
fingers buried into the thick bark. A thick branch jutted out a foot in front
of me. I reached out and grabbed it.
“Both hands,” he shouted, “use both hands. Pull yourself up!”
I was loath to release him, to give up that security. What if the branch
broke?

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“Quickly,” he gritted, teeth clenched. “I can’t hold on much longer.”
I saw the truth in his eyes, in his trembling arms. I let go of him and
grabbed the branch with both hands. It held.
I pulled myself halfway out of the water. But getting the rest of me out was
like pulling myself out of quicksand. The swift current tugged insistently at
me like a jealous lover, reluctant to give me up.
One great, heaving, yanking assist from the boy, and one leg lifted free of
the water. I swung it over the tree trunk, and pulled the rest of my body
slowly, painfully up. Once out of the water’s sucking grasp, I moved quickly.
Scooting down the trunk, I started the process of hauling my rescuer out.
Freed of his burden—me—he made a much quicker and more graceful job of heaving
himself up and out.
I crawled backward until we were on solid ground, and then simply let myself
fall off the trunk onto the wonderful still earth, feeling like one giant
black-and-blue, aching bruise, which was probably the case.
I felt him lower down beside me and gave myself a moment to rest. A moment
before I decided what to do next to my rescuer: thank him or kick him in the
balls again. He might have just saved my life, but he’d been the reason for
its peril in the first place. I hadn’t forgotten that.
The tingling sense of others—other Monère—stole across my senses and
forestalled my decision. I staggered to my feet, and saw the boy rise to his
also, silver dagger in hand. His holster was empty, the gun apparently lost.
Which sucked, really, because we were outnumbered. I counted ten men closing
in on us. Ten rogues, if I were not mistaken, Monère warriors cast out by
their Queens, often banding together as bandits. Four of them had swords, the
rest were just armed with daggers.
It was not just the worn clothes and hodgepodge assembly of their weapons that
made me think of them as rogues. Nor the older feel of their strength, their
power. It was the furtiveness of their movements, the meanness in their eyes,
the disillusioned hardness in them, and the hungry, gleaming avarice that
filled them when they spotted me, felt me. Queen.
“Friends of yours?” I asked.
“No,” the boy said. “Yours?”
“Nope.”
“Stay behind me.”
“Next to you would be better. Even up the odds a little more,” I said, coming
to stand beside him, making it five to two instead of ten to one. More even
odds, as I said.
Stubborn boy that he was, he stepped protectively forward, putting himself
between me and the men.
“Milady, you seem to be lost,” said a gray-haired warrior. He seemed to be not
only the oldest but the most powerful among them. Their leader, I presumed.
I wanted to say, Not lost, so much as kidnapped, but didn’t do anything so
foolish. In cases like this, a lie usually served much better than the truth.
Or in this case, a half-lie. “I fell into the river and was separated from the
rest of my men. They should be along shortly.”
“Good thing we sensed you then.” The man smiled, and it made my flesh crawl.
“We will protect you until your men come.” Substitute snatch and keep instead
of protect, and you would have their real intent. His words were helpful and
benign, but his actions were not. They surrounded us in a semicircle, the
river at our back, leaving us no place to run.
“Stay back,” the boy warned them.
A gesture from the leader and his men sprang. They rushed the boy, all
powerful warriors, experienced fighters. But he held them, unbelievably. Kept
them from me.
The boy fought unlike any other warrior I’d ever seen. He fought as if he were
moving in a lethal flowing dance, dipping and spinning to unheard music. He
dropped to the ground and whirled with his dagger in a slashing sweep, making
it look beautiful as he sliced across the lower legs of the five men engaging
him to his left. Then he rolled to meet the men converging from the right,

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dancing with them in a wicked ballet of blades. The men slashed and thrust
with brute force and chilling savagery while he dodged with grace and
serenity, moving with a superior ease none of the other rogues had—that none
of my men even possessed. They thrust, he parried, blocking and striking
unexpectedly with his wide wrist guards, using them as both weapons and
defense, whatever opportunity afforded him. Even the two rogues with long
swords he danced with. He fought them off, and turned back to meet the other
group.
It was an exquisite display of skill, of valiant heart, but numbers and
weapons do count and usually prevail. The odds were overwhelmingly against
him. He had injured some of the men, but had not taken any out. And the five
he’d pushed back pressed back in immediately as soon as he turned his
attention away. They circled behind him, waiting for their moment to strike.
I stepped away from the boy’s protection and engaged their interest, smiling,
opening my arms to them, my message plain: You want me, come get me.
With eager, lustful gleams in their eyes they did.
“No!” the boy shouted, somehow aware of my actions even as he fought. “Come
back, my lady.”
I could not obey him. Could not stand there and do nothing as they cut him
down, which they eventually would. My palms throbbed, my power awakening as I
called upon it. In a hot, flowing rush, it came at my beckoning, a living
force pulled from the center of me, spilling down my arms, into my hands, into
my Goddess’s Tears—the moles that were the size and color of large pearls
embedded deep in my palms.
A second powerful throb, like a living pulse of power, and a sword flew from a
surprised bandit’s hand into my right hand. Another pulsing pull, and I
stripped a silver dagger from another rogue, drawing it into my left hand. The
two unarmed men fell back, startled, and let the three others come at me.
I rushed forward to meet the trio, putting more distance between me and the
boy, giving me swinging room for the sword, which I used with far less grace
than my young protector but much more ruthlessly. I’d been captured before by
a band of outlaw rogues. I would not willingly be taken captive again; I knew
what my fate would be under their hands. While they fought to take me alive, I
was under no such restriction.
I met the sword-bearing warrior first. Our blades met in a harsh metallic
clash, and I saw surprise in his eyes at my strength, more than he had
expected. Knocking his sword aside with my own, I plunged the dagger deep into
his belly, angled upward. A hard swipe left and he collapsed on the ground,
his great vessels severed. Not a killing blow, but one that took him out of
commission until he healed.
His two armed companions roared and came at me with daggers in hand. I slashed
out with the sword. They leaped back, then pounced, springing at me as the
sword passed them by. I let the flow of it spin me completely around, and
buried the dagger gripped in my other hand into the side of a very surprised
rogue. I felt it break through a rib, puncture his lung. But these were
seasoned warriors. Injured as he was, he still swiped at me with his dagger. I
leaped away, bloody blade in hand, and found two others coming at me, one with
a sword he must have snatched from the other fallen rogue.
A new man entered the fray. Big Daddy had finally caught up. He was an older,
bearded version of his son, with the same warrior bracelets around his wrists,
armed with a dagger and a similar gun-in-holster setup. Of course, he just
used the dagger, not the gun. Gee, why carry it at all?
He stepped between us, and with a few simple blows and elegant dagger thrusts,
he took the two men down cleanly and easily. The remaining bandit, unarmed,
turned and ran.
“Glad you could join us,” I said. “I imagine your son could use your help.”
“Stay here.” He turned to go.
“Here.” I tossed him my sword. He caught it, and without a hitch in stride,
entered the fray.
I did as he said, I stayed there. Not because he’d told me to, but to watch

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the two of them for a moment. In battle, they were breathtaking to behold,
moving as a unit, complementing one another. It was fighting as I’d never seen
before, like poetry in motion. And the way the father wielded the sword…it
made what I’d done with it as merely hacking away—all I knew to do. In his
hands, though, the sword sang. A lethal song, but a mesmerizing one, whirring
through the air in the hands of a master.
Surprisingly, the dad left the sword-wielding bandit leader engaged with his
son instead of taking him on as he could have. Dad fought the two dagger-armed
rogues and the other swordsman, although fought implied an even match. It
wasn’t. He took two of them down as easily as drawing in breath—and just as
quick—leaving a last trembling rogue holding a shaking sword to face him.
The son held his own more easily now, facing just two bandits instead of five.
But held was the proper term. They were evenly matched. The boy kept his
opponents away from him, agilely dancing away from their blows, but he did not
cut any of them down.
I began a backward retreat. The boy was fine now. I could leave and should,
before the battle was over and it was too late to slip away. I’d fought beside
the boy, given the father my sword, but that didn’t make them my friends. Just
my temporary allies until the threat of the bandits was neutralized.
As before, the boy seemed aware of my movements, even faced away from me as he
was and engaged in battle. “Don’t,” he said, turning his head slightly to look
at me.
One bare moment of inattention, and the bandit leader’s sword slipped past the
boy’s guard and ran him through.
I cried out—not the boy, he was silent—and leaped for them, moving fast. But
not as fast as the father. The big man threw his dagger, burying the blade in
his opponent’s throat, taking him out. Then he turned, and with one powerful
downstroke, cut off the leader’s arm—the arm holding the sword that had run
his son through. With fast-flowing economy, the downstroke turned into a side
slash, slicing open the last remaining bandit in a ruby splash of blood. Three
simple moves and the battle was over.
He stepped in front of his fallen son, sword in hand, but did nothing more.
Just watched as the wounded bandits dragged themselves away.
The bandit leader cautiously stooped down and retrieved his severed limb and
weapon. “Don’t come back here again,” he snarled, retreating. His men, those
that were able to stand, threw their fallen comrades over their shoulders and
followed him.
I ran to the boy’s side, dropped down beside him, muttering, “Stupid, stupid,
stupid!”
“I know,” the boy said, his voice strained with pain. “I let him past my
guard.”
“Not you,” I snapped. “Me. For coming back to you.” His hand was pressed over
the wound in front. I laid my hand over the back exit wound, which was
spilling out blood like a dam with a high-pressured leak. The moment my palm
came in contact with blood and flesh, that deep cycle of energy within me came
up and out, called forth by the pain of another, easing it as my mole tingled
and warmed, searching out the depths of his injury. Miraculously, it had
punctured cleanly through, missing his intestines and other vital organs.
Lucky son of a bitch. Of course, he’d probably have been able to heal those
wounds as well. He was a Full Blood Monère, after all. What the hell was I
doing?
“You took the pain away. Are you a healer?” the boy asked. My face softened
when I looked down into his. Young, so young, even though he was taller than I
by a good five inches.
“Not really.” Not in the usual way. I could heal, yes, but through sex. And
that wasn’t called for here. Injured though the boy was, he would heal without
my intervention. But I was trained as a nurse; there were other commonsense
things you could do, like decrease the loss of blood.
“Give me part of your shirt or something to staunch the blood with,” I snapped
at the father, who was gazing down at me with curious attention. Without a

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word, he ripped off a shirt sleeve and handed it to me. I folded it into a
compress and gently pressed it against the rear exit wound. He tore off his
other sleeve, and I used it for the entry wound.
“Why didn’t you use your damn gun?” I demanded.
“They had no guns. It would not have been an equal fight,” the big man said.
“It wasn’t an equal fight once you got here,” I snapped back.
I sacrificed my own two sleeves, tore them into strips, and bound them into
one long piece, tying it around his waist to hold the two compresses in place.
Sitting back, I glared up at the big man. He still held the sword I’d given
him. “Two questions,” I said, my tone a rock-hard contrast to the softness
with which I’d spoken to his son. “What did you do with the Mixed Blood boy
you had tied up near my home?” With Wiley. The wild fear and anger on his face
when I last saw him flashed again in my mind’s eye.
“I knocked him out then uncuffed him.”
So Wiley should be fine. Just angry and frightened after he awakened, but
essentially unharmed.
“What is your second question?” he asked.
Oh, that was an easy and obvious one. And you could say my tone was more than
a touch hostile. “What the fuck do you want with me?”
The man laid down the sword, away from me, I noticed, and crouched down so
that we were more of an equal height. It was his injured son, however, who
answered me.
“My lady, please. My brother, he needs a Lady of Light. I beg of you, please
save him before it’s too late.”

FOUR

WE WERE BACK once more in the car, but I was sitting up, free. No silver
handcuffs. I’d have felt better if I had been restrained but, nope. I was here
of my own free will. By my own stupid volition. We were crossing out of my
Louisiana territory into the bordering state of Texas, and I was sitting there
doing nothing about it.
The rogues, it seemed, resided along the fringe of my territory. And they were
not the only rogues who plagued me. Father and son were rogues as well,
something that came as almost a shock to me. I hadn’t thought of them as such.
They were dressed better and seemed, I don’t know, somehow honorable…even
though they’d knocked me unconscious and taken me from my people. Which went
to say just how screwed up my judgment was…continued to be. Maybe I could
blame it on being hit in the head. It just knocked the sense right out of me,
you know?
I don’t think that was going to go over too well with my guys when I got back
home. If I got back home. I was trusting the word of two rogues—that they
would return me safely back after my look-see, even if I decided not to help
Dante, the reason for this all. How stupid was that? Very stupid, because I
believed them. That was why I was here, playing the nice, sedate passenger.
We would be there in twenty-five minutes, they had said, and were accurate
almost down to the minute. The little hand of the clock had just ticked up to
eight when we turned into the driveway of a neat little home just off of
County Road 257, fifteen minutes past the WELCOME TO TEXAS sign. It was a
rural setting, looking totally normal and feeling that way, too, if you were
just a human, which I was not.
A wave of power, of need, coming from the house punched me like a blow to the
stomach, so strong and fierce it was. I gasped, sitting there in the car, more
than a little shaken. “Christ, what the hell is that?”
Quentin, the boy, turned around in his seat, said with sorrow in his eyes,
“That’s Dante, my brother.”
Holy crap. “How old is your brother, exactly?”
“We’re twins. He’s twenty, same as me.”

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“Twins, huh?” And a whole year younger than me. How thrilling.
“We’re not identical.”
“No kidding,” I said. “You feel nothing alike.”
“No, we don’t,” Quentin said sadly. “He’s older than me by six minutes, which
is why I was spared his fate.”
Lunara asseros, Nolan, the father, had called it, or lunar craving. Also known
as Moon Madness, so named because those who had it were often driven mad by
their unfulfilled need for lunar light. It was why I was here, and what I was
supposed to cure, a rare affliction that could strike down a warrior. Not all.
Usually just the strongest or the first born. Rare because it occurred only if
a Monère warrior never Basked, never was exposed to the moon’s essential light
pouring into them. Rare because almost every Monère Basked at least once in
their lifetime. Unless you were born rogues, as these two boys had been, and
had never known a Queen’s light.
What happens to those afflicted? I had asked.
If they do not receive the light that their Monère body craves in time…that
their thinking mind needs to survive…then they burn out, go mad. Become
nothing more than a ravening beast that must be put down and destroyed or he
will go on to kill others.
I’d asked how long Dante had been ill.
Thirty-six hours now, had been the answer. That was a long time.
A brown-haired woman with warm brown eyes, standing half a head shorter than
I, rushed out of the back door and hurried to the car. Her hair was coiled in
a simple bun, and a gold ring adorned her left hand.
“Thank the Goddess,” she said fervently. “You brought a Queen.”
“My mother, Hannah Morell,” Quentin said, introducing us. “Mother, this is
Mona Lisa. She’s come to help Dante.”
I didn’t quibble over his choice of words. Didn’t say that they’d kidnapped
me. I stepped out of the car and I saw the surprise register in Hannah’s eyes
when she saw that I was not restrained.
“And you’ve come of your own volition.” She sank down to her knees, tears in
her eyes. “Thank you, gracious lady, thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Please, get up.” I gestured awkwardly for her to rise,
flustered at having her kneeling like that. “And I only promised to take a
look at him,” I clarified.
“Quentin is hurt, Mother. A sword ran him through,” Nolan said as he opened
the passenger door and gently lifted Quentin into his arms. “He needs your
healing touch.”
I glanced back at the small woman rising to her feet. “You’re a healer?”
“Yes, milady.”
I turned with exasperation to father and son. “If you dunderheads had told me
that in the first place instead of knocking me out, I’d have come with you
voluntarily. God, I’d do just about anything to get a healer for my people.”
“Save my son,” Hannah said passionately, “and I will serve you.”
“You will be our healer?”
“Yes. My word, by the holy Goddess of Light.”
“Okay, good, good,” I said, immensely cheered and vastly more motivated
now…until another powerful wave of that vibrant want, that stunning need, hit
me, stealing my breath away. I swayed for a moment, then caught my breath and
balance and followed Nolan and Quentin into the house.
It felt odd entering their home. Odd because the real reason I was being
brought here was to have sex with their son. That’s right, sex. Not Basking,
because we drew down the moon’s rays only during a full moon—that was several
weeks away, and from what I’d felt, I didn’t think the boy could wait that
long. But Basking wasn’t the only way Queens gave off light. Sex—pleasure—also
made us glow.
Nolan laid Quentin down on a sofa in the family room next to the kitchen.
Leaving him in Hannah’s care, he led me down the hall to his other son. “He’s
in the study,” he told me.
I followed him, trepidation fluttering inside me like wild butterflies. I

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don’t know what I expected to see when he opened the door and cautiously
entered. Maybe someone looking like Quentin, only more drawn and haggard,
sitting in a chair, shaking with need. I should have known better. I should
have known from the feel of his power that he would be nothing like what I
expected. That he would be nothing at all like his brother.
My first thought was that this was not a boy. I would have called him a man,
like I was a woman and not a girl despite my years, had he been a rational
being. But he was not. There was nothing rational in those eyes. And what odd
eyes he had, a blue so pale they were almost translucent. They were eyes that
I had never seen before, but felt somehow as if I had. Those eyes sent a chill
racing through me, as if a ghost had just tripped and fallen on my grave.
He was shackled at both wrists by a three-foot length of silver chain attached
to the wall, allowing him to stand and move about. And he was doing that,
straining against the taut length when I stepped in, his body quivering, his
pale eyes fixed upon me with unthinking hunger. Making me thankful for the
chains that restrained him, otherwise he would have been on me like a famished
beast.
He had his mother’s brown hair, but lighter in color, honey brown. That was
the only soft thing about him. His hair was an even longer length than his
brother’s, pulled back in a ponytail that may have once been neat, but was far
from that now. Hanks of hair, freed from the hair tie, hung about his face.
Unkempt stubble shadowed his chin, and an earring, if you could call it that,
punctured—not pierced, but punctured—his left ear. I’d never seen a Monère
with an earring before. Probably because our bodies healed so quickly. But
this man-boy creature had one. Not the neat, needle-thin hole you normally
saw, but a much bigger one. A crude, hand-hammered gold bar almost pencil
thick was punched through the earlobe. Much more primitive, like what you’d
see among native tribes in Africa maybe. And that was pretty much a good word
to describe him—primitive. Primal. Dangerous.
Whereas his brother was model pretty, Dante was like his famous namesake,
invoking images of Hell. Cruelty and harshness marked his face, and all he
wore were dirty, torn pants. His chest and feet were bare, showing his starved
leanness. It was as if every ounce of fat had been consumed from his body,
honing him down to nothing but hard striations of bunched muscles. He was like
a cutting blade of power, hard and austere. I could literally count his ribs,
see the hard muscles fanning over them. His chest was soaked with sweat, and
the smell of it was sickly, not a healthy scent. Just as the look in his eyes
was not a healthy hunger, but an unthinking, overpowering one—like that of a
rabid dog foaming with madness and the need to tear out your throat.
The sorrow that had been in Quentin’s voice was heard in his father’s now.
“Dante. Son,” he said softly, trying to bring Dante back to himself. “I’ve
brought a Queen to help you. Mona Lisa. She’ll give you the light you need
from her, if you let her.”
A rumbling growl started deep in Dante’s chest and rose up into his throat.
With no warning he lunged at his father. The chains jerked him to a halt,
snapping him abruptly back. He prowled back and forth restlessly against the
restraining length like the wild creature he had become.
The sadness I’d first heard in his brother, then in his father, was a
pervasive thing. It seeped into me. Sadness at the waste, at the loss. Sadness
because I thought it was too late to save him. But still I had to try. Taking
a deep breath, I stepped forward until I stood only two arms’ lengths away
from him.
“Dante,” I said softy, and knew somehow that he was as intensely aware of my
presence as I was of his, even though his gaze was locked with his father’s, a
steady growl rumbling from his throat. I called his name again but his
attention did not waver from the other man.
“Nolan, back up to the door. Don’t leave, but give us some room.”
Nolan did as I asked, moving back until I could no longer see him, and his
presence no longer pressed so strongly upon us—until all I could see was just
the tortured, wild creature that was his son. The growling stopped and those

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odd blue eyes suddenly turned and met mine. The impact reverberated through my
entire body. Such fierceness, such intensity. There was something very
frightening about those eyes. Was there anything still rational left in there?
“Dante.” Though my heart beat rapidly, my voice was as calm and gentle as the
freshly fallen night. “Do you understand what I’m saying? Can you speak?”
He stood still but not at ease. Every muscle in his body was tense,
quiveringly taut. I took one step closer to him, and slowly lifted my hand
out, a hand that shook slightly.
“Dante.” His name fell from my lips like a soft melody as I touched him. As I
laid my hand lightly on his chest.
He groaned, a harsh, guttural sound like an animal in great pain. The sound
startled me, and I jerked my hand back. He went wild at the loss, snarling and
lunging powerfully forward, jerked to a rattling halt by the chains. Only the
fleece lining beneath the shackles kept his skin from tearing.
I fell back a step, I couldn’t help it. Even knowing that the silver chains
rendered him only human strong, there was such anger to him, such menace, I
could not help but be frightened. My heart pounded and the trembling of my
hand spread to my entire body.
“I’m sorry,” I said, turning so I could see Nolan from the corner of my eyes.
“I…can’t. Not with him like this. Even if I were crazy enough to try it…” And
I would have tried it, had Dante shown even a modicum of reasoning, of
understanding—making me wonder who the crazy one among us really was. “It
would not do any good. We shine only in pleasure.” And I doubted I’d be able
to feel that with Dante, as wild and violent and dangerous as he was.
The big man didn’t say anything, and his silence and sorrow weighed down upon
me like a heavy stone. And why should it not? I had just essentially passed a
death sentence on his son. One that he would have to carry out. But the tall,
formidable warrior didn’t protest, didn’t try to insist, holding to his
word…that the choice would be mine.
Because he did, I swallowed and voiced the other option I had considered. “If
your other son, Quentin…if I glowed with him here in this room, would it help?
Could Dante absorb my light if we were close to him but not touching?”
Hope flared in the big man’s eyes. “Yes, it should. Proximity is all that is
needed in Basking. It should be the same with this, too.” This being sex.
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s give it a try.”
We didn’t have to call him. Every word we said was clearly heard by everyone
in the household—one of the downfalls of possessing such acute hearing: no
privacy, unless we deliberately tuned down our senses. Quentin appeared in the
doorway, dressed in clean clothes and no longer smelling of blood.
“You’re healed?” I asked as our eyes met in that intense awareness of two
people who knew they would soon be intimate with each other.
Quentin nodded.
“Do you have a condom?”
Uncertainty passed across that pretty face. Young. So young, cried a voice
inside me. Yeah, but he was the lesser of two evils. I sure as hell was not
going to fuck his father. Nolan was a married man.
Ironically enough, it was the married man’s wife who appeared with a familiar
square foil packet in her hand. She pressed what I had requested into
Quentin’s hand and left when she caught sight of my flaming face and Dante’s
wild, animalistic state.
With condom in hand, Quentin stepped into the room and came toward me. His
brother went ballistic. Dante lunged, flung himself out. Not his upper body,
but his lower one, his feet flying out in a half-circle. With the added length
that gave him, that of his entire body and arms stretched out to their
fullest, it was enough to reach me. His feet swept across my knees, knocking
me down. I fell and he rolled over me, a fluid, seething mass, coming quickly
to his feet. Hands clamped down on me and he pushed me behind him, crouching
in front of me, growling viciously at Nolan and Quentin, who had rushed
forward in alarm.
“Stop!” I said. “Don’t come any closer. It’s all right. It’s all right,” I

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repeated as father and son halted their headlong rush. “Dante’s just trying to
protect me…I think.” The last two words were muttered prayerlike, flung up
heavenward by my racing heart.
Whatever Dante was doing, it was compelled by his most primal instincts. And
the need to protect a Queen was a real hard-wired one instilled in all
warriors. I was betting my safety—and his—on it.
He had latched his left hand onto my wrist, leaving his right hand free to
fight with. And he’d put me behind him, a protective gesture as well as a
possessive one, setting himself between me and the other men.
“Back up,” I said as calmly as I could. “He has me, and hasn’t hurt me so far.
Let’s see what he does.”
Nolan and Quentin moved back to the door and stopped there, watching us,
making me realize what I had said: Let’s see what he does. I hadn’t meant it
literally. Not really. At least, not in Quentin’s case.
“Quentin, if you could, um, leave. The less people in the room, the better,” I
said to soften my request. “I’ll be fine with your father. Just…leave the
condom.” My face flushed fire-engine red as Quentin slid the precious foil
packet across the floor to me. When he slipped quietly from the room, the
coiled tension in Dante’s body revved down a notch. Down to a watchful battle
readiness instead of a ready-to-erupt-and-tear-out-our-throats state. He
backed us up as far as we could go, until we came up against the wall. Then
his attention turned to me.
Oh boy.
Intensity was a nice thing in a would-be lover. It told you they were paying
attention to you. But not to this degree—this raw, overwhelming amount. This
much of it was more scary than exciting…but a spark of sanity had crept into
that blue sea of madness. Those fierce, pale eyes swept over me, examining
every detail as if I were a two-headed alien suddenly plopped down in from of
him. He studied me as if he felt the same thing I did: like he should know me
but didn’t. I had the feeling that if he could have drank me down with those
pale, eerie eyes of his, I would have been drained completely dry and left
like parched, cracked earth.
He raised a hand slowly as if I were the wild creature that had to be gentled,
and swept it just above my skin as if he could feel my force, my presence, my
aphidy—that unique, attractive force and fragrance inherent to all Queens. It
had flared out wildly, reaching for him the first time his hungry power had
hit me. I had clamped down on it tightly, desperately contained it. It
vibrated my skin now where he ran his hand over it, stroking my invisible
power, buzzing and prickling where his hand wrapped around my wrist. A small
pulse of power escaped from me and jumped to him against my will, as if our
energies wanted to blend, merge, come together—something I’d never experienced
before with another man.
As startled as I, he dropped my wrist and we faced each other, inches apart,
both of us breathing heavily, our bodies quivering and tense. He was behaving
himself as much as I was, keeping his power controlled on a tight leash, not
letting it pummel me as it had before. He was sane enough not to want to scare
me away, I realized. Comforting. But if we were to get intimate, I
wanted—needed—to know that he was rational enough to control himself, to not
hurt me. He was bound by silver. I was stronger than him, I could protect
myself. But still…something in me could not help but fear him.
Strong though I was, when a woman opened her body to a man, she was vulnerable
to him in ways only another woman could understand. Before I let loose my
aphidy, before I had sex with him, I had to trust him enough to let go of the
tight rein of my control. That was the only way I’d be able to glow. And I
didn’t know if I could do that with him.
He was such a raw mass of seething pain. I sensed it, and that part of me that
had always been drawn to pain was drawn to him now because of it. I didn’t try
to resist it. Lifting my hand, I laid it again on his bare chest. Once again,
the small pulse of power jumped between us. His face twisted, as if my touch
pained him, but he did not groan as he had before—the sound that had startled

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me, made me jerk back away from him. He clenched his teeth, swallowed down the
sound, and shuddered from my touch.
Just my palm laid flat against his chest with my Goddess’s Tears pressing into
his skin, and something between us connected like a current flowing out of me
to him. A circuit that cycled back to me. My pearly moles flared to life and
did what they usually did around pain. My palm began to tingle, my hand grew
warm, and my power, drawn forth by the suffering of another, spilled out of me
and seeped into his flesh in a wide, assessing sweep, easing the pain.
God. Such agony he was in. What control it had taken on his part simply not to
lash out at me in reaction to that pain. “Dante, can you say something?
Anything?”
“Touch me more.” The words came out hoarse and guttural, as if they’d been
wrenched from him.
I looked into his eyes and saw that tiny spark of sanity firm, grow stronger
with our physical connection. “Thank God,” I whispered. Looking into his eyes,
feeling him through my palm, reading him, I knew that we’d pulled him
back—both he and I together—from that brink of madness he’d been teetering on.
I knew that he would not hurt me, that I could save him. That I wanted to save
him. Not just for the healer he would gain me. But for himself. For the
valiant warrior that he was, the fierce will inside of him that had
tenaciously pulled him back from the encroaching madness.
I stuffed the condom in my pocket, freeing my other hand, and laid it across
his forehead, pushing my disquiet aside to just concentrate on him, the poor
suffering creature before me. My palm flushed and tingled as that pain-easing
power of mine spilled into him, soothing the jagged edges of his mind and
body. His eyes closed and his jaw clenched. Wetness spiked his lashes.
“It’s okay. You can groan if you need to. It just startled me that first
time,” I murmured. But he didn’t, and I was glad he didn’t. I still felt
uneasy around him. “I’m taking away some of the pain, removing the symptom.
Not curing the disease,” I told him.
His lashes lifted, dark wet crescents. “How can we cure it?” He spoke with
less strain, but his voice still sounded rusty, sore.
I hesitated, then answered him with his own words. “Touch me.”
His right hand lifted slowly, hesitantly, the chains clinking with his
movement. It came to rest cautiously on my shoulder. “Your shirt is wet,” he
said. But it was his body that shook as I brought my other hand to his face
and traced both hands down his cheeks, his neck, moving to his shoulders,
pausing there a moment, then drifting down his arms, back up. Smoothing across
his chest in gentle, tingling sweeps.
“I fell in a river,” I said, explaining why my shirt was wet.
Chains rattled as his left hand came up to rest on my other shoulder. He began
an echoing refrain of my motions, gliding them down my arms. Back up.
“When you touched me that first time, I knew I could not let you go.” His
voice was a raw and husky murmur. “Don’t leave me.”
“I won’t,” I promised, even though my heart sped up in disquiet at his words.
The thought of being held by him, captured by him…I shook off the unease. “I
won’t leave you unless you bite me. That is the only thing that will make me
go,” I said, continuing my ministrations, learning his body, easing his pain.
I tried to lose myself in the pleasure of touching him, my hands drifting down
his abdomen, sweeping up his sides, skimming lightly up and down his back.
“I won’t bite you,” he said in that ragged voice of his.
“No biting. No blood. All other things you may do.” Meeting Nolan’s eyes over
Dante’s shoulder, I gestured for him to leave and he slipped from the room,
closing the door softly behind him. Taking that mental step, committing myself
wholly to this, I swept a hand lightly over his groin, finding him long and
hard, swollen full.
His teeth ground together audibly, and his body tensed to rock hardness. His
skin stretched taut over the sharp blades of his cheekbones, and his pale blue
eyes glittered down at me. I looked away, finding it easier to touch him, be
with him, if I did not look into those eerie, familiar but unfamiliar eyes.

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“This is the cure,” I said softly, taking the verbal step. “Touch me. Make
love to me.”
His hands gripped my shoulders tightly before he consciously eased his grip.
And that one moment of force, that hint of strength, drew my breath in.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said, alarmed, almost panicking, lifting his hands away.
“I’m not.” Warmth spilled across my cheeks in an embarrassed blush. “It
was…nice,” I admitted softly. “I liked that firmness, the hint of your
strength. Touch me more.”
I felt him heat at my words, but he stood there in an agony of stillness, fear
that I would be frightened into leaving battling with his desire to do as I
said—to touch me more.
I took his hands in both of mine, and some of that frightened tension left him
as we connected once more. Until I slid them under my wet T-shirt and laid his
hands against my bare skin. Then tension roared back into him again. Simmered
between us as I swept my hands over his hips and slid them down his buttocks.
He sucked in his breath, expelled it out when I continued on my journey,
sweeping my palms down the back of his cloth-covered thighs.
He trembled as if a fever shook him, his cheeks slashed red. Breathing hard,
his hands drifted slowly up my torso. The metal of his right restraint bumped
up against my side, and I winced. In pain this time, not pleasure. His hands
stilled. “You’re hurt.”
“Bruised a bit. There were some big rocks in that river.”
“Let me see.” He waited until I nodded, then drew up my T-shirt. And hissed.
“That bad, huh?” I swallowed. “Best to take the T-shirt off so you can see
where to touch, and where not to touch.” I smiled as I said it, but inside I
was not smiling. As my shirt was lifted over my head and tossed away, inside I
was cringing. I was built modestly on top. Neat and compact were the best
words to describe me. And the vivid purple and red bruises discoloring my left
side and right arm did not help make me any more attractive. Despite my bold
actions with him, I was far from confident when it came to sex. The men I’d
been with had loved me, and I them. Dante hardly knew me. And his vision of me
was not colored by love. My turn to tremble, to feel horribly vulnerable. I
could not meet his eyes. Did not want to see what expression filled them.
If only Monères glowed from embarrassment. How easily then it would have been
to cure him.
“Take off your pants.” A brief pause. Then he added, “Please,” like it was a
word he was not used to saying.
Well, heck. Why don’t we just make it harder? But I nodded, and despite the
trepidation filling me, undid the button, pushed down the zipper, and stepped
out of my wet jeans and underwear, completely bare to him now. Still, I could
not lift my eyes, even when he removed his own pants. He folded them neatly—an
odd thing to do in this situation, I thought—and laid them on the floor. Then
taking my hands, he drew me down to sit across his thighs as he leaned back
against the wall.
“You’ll be more comfortable this way. And I’ll be less likely to hurt you,” he
said. And it put me in control, as much as a woman could be in control when
you made love with a man. It touched me, the gesture. The thoughtfulness
behind it. The heavy chains, though, clinking and rattling with each move were
distracting and annoying, setting my already jumpy nerves even more on edge.
“Let me remove the chains,” I said, reaching for his shackles.
“No,” he said sharply, pulling his wrists out of my reach. “It’s not safe. I’m
not safe yet. Leave them on.”
I mentally dug a hole and buried the last of my unease in it. Yes, I thought,
he’s a man worth saving. But instead of making me feel better, it made me feel
worse. Never had I felt the burden of my own pleasure so keenly. My initiation
into sex had been a painful thing. With humans. Humans that Monère are not
compatible with because we’re of a different chemistry, a different race. It
wasn’t until I came across another Monère, across Gryphon, that I had found
the joy and pleasure that could be had in being intimate with a man.
I’d never had a man’s life—a virgin, to boot—dependent on my glowing in

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pleasure before. Of him going mad and being executed by his own father if I
didn’t. It wasn’t so much his lack of lovemaking skills I was doubting as much
as I was questioning my own adequacy. A woman is harder to stir up and please
than a man. Pure, unalterable fact. And right now, bruised and unsettled among
strangers, bare skin to bare skin with someone I felt I should know but
didn’t, I did not feel up to the burdensome task that pleasure had suddenly
become.
Dante was calmer, saner now, after I’d eased his pain. Maybe we could wait
until we returned to Belle Vista and Dontaine was there to help us. I knew
that I could glow with Dontaine.
“What is your name?” Dante demanded in a gritty voice.
“Mona Lisa.”
“Mona Lisa,” he repeated. And while his next words were said in a soft
whisper, they were tinged with strain. “Can you…touch me? It’s starting to
hurt again.”
My faint hope died. Nope, we weren’t going to be able to wait.
I shifted up on my knees and laid a hand on his chest, another on his
forehead. Praying while I did so. Please. Help me be enough for him.
He closed his eyes, relaxing beneath my tingling touch.
As the pain seeped out of him, my touch changed from soothing to caressing,
stroking the slight swell of his chest, trailing down the bristly side of his
face to trace his slightly chapped lips. Such a smooth-rough contrast. Like
what he was—dangerous pleasure. I leaned even closer until our lips were just
a breath apart. “Dante,” I whispered, brushing my mouth against his. “Come
dance with me.”
We kissed and it was a sweet, light thing. A mingling of breath, of scent. A
simple pleasing of our senses.
At first his lips were soft and yielding, pliant. As if he’d never kissed
anyone before, and perhaps he hadn’t. As if he were just absorbing the feel of
me. Then they firmed, moved across mine in a light caress, brushing across my
lips, easing back, coming back at a different angle. He danced with me as I
had asked him to. With his mouth, with his lips, only his lips, closed and
gentle-rough against mine. He kissed me now as an active participant, with
pleased discovery, with growing delight. With quickly learned skill, and
slowly budding pleasure. Finding what he liked. What I liked. Building that
slight, fragile connection between us with soft caresses, gentle touches.
Until I yearned for more than just the feel of his lips brushing against mine.
Until I yearned for the taste of him, too.
My tongue swept lightly across his lips. His eyes, still closed, twitched with
surprise. I smiled and did it again. A light, deliberate wet stroke across the
seam of his mouth. “Open for me,” I whispered.
He did. Our mouths mated again with our lips open, and I tasted him. A light
sweep in his mouth, a gentle foray, retreating then. I did it again—gentle
probe in, a teasing flicker of my tongue against the tip of his. When I
retreated this time, he followed, delving into my mouth with a light stroke of
his own. Another, and another. Tasting me as I tasted him. Teasing my tongue
as I’d teased his, a sure and quick learner. And all the while our mouths and
tongues danced with each other, my hands moved over him. A sweep over his wide
shoulders. A caressing stroke down the muscles of his arms. He did not have
the thickness and breadth of chest and shoulders that he would have in another
century. He had the sweet, budding slenderness of youth still yet, with more.
The muscles carving his body marked his entry into manhood, and his claim on a
warrior’s body, strength, and will. That will now was focused on finding my
pleasure.
We were playing a more intimate version of Simon Says. He did as I did, went
where I went. His hands lifted, touched me, across the shoulders, feathering
over my collarbones. He sighed into my mouth with pure unadulterated delight
at the raw pleasure of touching me, tangling our tongues together in a wet,
intimate caress. He sipped upon me, nibbled on my lower lip.
When I tensed and drew in a breath as his teeth skimmed across my flesh, he

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said in a gritty whisper, “No biting, no blood. I remember. But all other
things I may do, yes?”
“Yes.”
He smiled and watched me with half-closed eyes. The hard intent gleam, his
rough stubble, the primitive ear piercing, and the darkness I sensed in him
tangled up with this gentleness—it all sent a tremor shooting through me.
Because playing with him was like playing with a keg of dynamite. Safe until
it blew up on you. And that darkness that dwelled within me—that had been a
part of me even before I took in the demon essence—was both scared and
thrillingly turned on by that perilous pleasure.
With deliberate lightness, he drew his hands slowly down my breasts, learning
their shape, their feel, watching my reaction to his touch. Helpless tremors
shook me as his fingers skimmed over my nipples. They pebbled in response and
those hooded eyes lowered down to them in fascination. His fingers returned to
circle the pouting hardness that he’d drawn forth, rimming the brown areolas,
brushing softly over the sensitive tips. He watched me respond, his piercing
eyes lifting back up to mine, and I was helpless to look away as the control
suddenly shifted from me to him.
“You like this?”
I nodded, unable to speak with the rough pads of his fingers brushing over my
nipples. A light swirling stroke, then a firmer caress. His fingers traced
down the slight swell of my breasts. Drifted down my belly. He splayed his
hands across my waist, my hips, down my thighs, back up again. With just the
tips of his fingers, as if he were a blind man reading braille, reading me, he
ran those sensitive rough pads around to the back of me and bent his head
down. Again I had the sense that he was reading me, learning me, as he moved
his mouth inch by inch closer until his lips brushed my nipple.
My hands tightened on his arms. Tightened more as he drew that sensitive tip
into his mouth and I felt wetness and warmth. And pleasure. Oh my God, so much
pleasure. He played with that nipple the same way he had kissed me, with slow,
deliberate intent, with loving thoroughness, with pleased discovery.
I leaned into him, increasing the pressure, asking for more, and he gave it to
me. A firmer lick, a harder suction, the dangerous tease and scrape of his
teeth across the budded tip while his hands cupped my bottom, kneading the
rounded flesh in a firm, caressing grip.
He drew me to him and our naked flesh met. Our bodies pressed together and he
was unable to hold back the groan that welled up in him, that seemed to come
from his very soul. It came tumbling out of his mouth as he released my tender
bud and buried his face against me. His stubble scraped across my erect nipple
and it felt good, so good. I moaned softly and moved against him, increasing
the friction against the rough abrasiveness of his beard, twisting like a cat
in his lap, purring with delight.
Our breath came faster, and yet we still held to our individual control. The
time had come to loosen it, and I was frightened and scared and excited and
impatient. Sex—ultimate pleasure—was about losing control, not keeping it, and
I felt eagerness stir within me. My power knew that it would soon be freed.
Stretching sideways, I grabbed my pants and dug the foil packet out of the
pocket. Gripping the condom in my hand, I prayed that it would be all right.
That we would be okay in the storm I was about to unleash.
“I’m going to loosen my power now,” I told him. “I have to let go of my
control, but you can’t. You have to stay in control.” My next words were
delivered with a wry smile. “I’ll try to be gentle.” Something a man would
normally say. “But it’s probably going to hit us hard.”
I felt it like an eager wave, ready to fall, to crash down.
“What do you mean?”
“Just remember. No biting, no blood. Or I will leave you.”
His pale eyes darkened at that threat. “No biting, no blood. My word on it.”
Trusting in him, I let go of the tight rein I had over myself. We had a moment
of quiet, of breathless silence. Then the presence that was within me, the
power and attraction that made me Queen, that drew all males to me, emerged,

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set free. It came roaring out in a dazzling gush of power. And spilled out and
onto him.
“Shit,” he said. His hands clamped down tight around me as it hit him, and
then his own power rose up to meet mine so that we were suddenly drowning in
biting energy, awash with primitive vital urges. Becoming nothing more than
what we instinctively needed. I felt his hunger, his cry for the moon’s light.
And within me was pulled forth my own need, my own personal craving. Not the
demon urge for blood that I had feared, but the urge that was buried in all
Monère women—the need to feel life growing in them. It flared up hot and hard
within me, and spilled out onto him. Every hard-wired instinct in us propelled
us together in that unthinking need to mate. To bear forth life.
With a growl, his mouth came back upon me. He drew in my nipple, sucking hard
with primitive drive, and that forceful sucking built the need in me even
greater until it became almost pain. Give me a child! Give me a baby!
As if he heard my body’s cry, his finger pushed into me and found me wet,
moist and ready. Warm fertile ground. He shifted, laid me down on the floor,
and came over me, covering me, braced on his arms. His pale blue eyes were
wild, his body trembling with need, but he held back, poised there at my gate.
“Say yes,” he gritted.
A split moment to decide. An endless cycle of time to let the foil packet
spill out of my hand. To fall onto the floor, released. “Yes,” I breathed.
He thrust forward, missed the entrance, and we both cried out in painful
frustration. I reached down, took ahold of him, and guided him where we both
wanted him to go. He thrust forward again and penetrated me, filled me up,
brought forth my light. And my light brought out his—a weak, pale glimmer of
my own, as if he were a dying battery, almost completely drained.
He drew out, surged into me. And it was suddenly not enough. I was the one who
went wild, becoming nothing more than a creature of instinctive need, twisting
beneath the hard male body thrusting into me. Writhing against him, rising up
to him, my legs wrapped around him to help him slam into me. More, more, more!
my body demanded. And he gave it to me with grunting force. He thrust deep, he
thrust hard, spilling his seed into me in a harsh, choking climax. Then I was
coming, too.
Power crystallized within me and exploded out of me. Light spilled out,
illuminating me, blindingly intense. I felt him drink in my light, not a
passive process, absorbing it, but actually pulling it into him with the force
of his own need, like a physical hand hauling in a rope, and I was that rope.
He glowed, suddenly bright like a fire ignited, and my light lessened for one
shaking, shuddering moment that passed so quickly I could almost believe it
didn’t happen, would have believed it had I not felt it so keenly. A momentary
blast, then the light that lit us up, was emitted from us, became normal once
more.
He watched me as ecstasy filled us both. Watched me as I shattered beneath
him. Watched me still. “Again,” he said and moved. And with surprise, I felt
him still hard within me.
How could that be? I’d felt him come. Had felt the pulsing jets of his release
shooting within me. Had felt the wetness of his spilled seed mixing with my
own juice, trickling out of me. But the hard, smooth length moving within me,
washing me anew with sharp, edgy sensations was undeniable. One stroke. Two. A
fluttered heartbeat. A skipped breath. And then he sank himself down deep
inside me like a sword thrusting home all the way into its sheath. And with us
connected like that, he rolled us on the floor until we came up against the
wall.
He shifted around until he sat propped up against it with me sitting on his
lap and him still deep inside of me, thick and throbbing. In this new
position, he began moving in me. A slow, languorous stroke, deep and fine. In
this new position, his hands, freed, moved over me also, stroking me on the
outside as he stroked me on the inside. Lazy, thorough. But whereas he moved
inside me with firm hard pressure, along my skin he touched me with but the
barest pressure. Deep strokes within, light tantalizing strokes without. His

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fingertips trailed almost ticklishly light over my skin, sensitizing it even
more until I became screamingly aware of everything he did to me. Everywhere
he touched me, inside and out.
Those grazing fingertips crisscrossed a devilish path down my back, arching me
into him as he leaned forward until his breath fell with teasing, tantalizing
puffs upon my breasts. Until my nipples hardened into pebbles, puckered up
under the warm current of air moving over them. Inside, my sheath tightened in
corresponding reaction, in parallel anticipation, gripping his thick stalk
even more tightly, even more sweetly, as he did what I’d asked him to do—as he
danced with me. As he danced within me. As he played me with his hands, with
his breath, with his hard male organ. As he finally touched the spear points
of my breasts, not with his soft lips but with his rough bristles, I gasped in
shock, in surprise, in pure seething pleasure. Jerked against him. Bucked
against him below as he rubbed that sandpapery roughness over me, scraped it
over my peaks, drawing forth such an abrasive cascade of pleasure, of sweet,
moaning sensation.
Light finger strokes down my back, over my buttocks. A hard, bristly rub
across my breasts. While inside me he moved in a sure, lazy rhythm as he
tilted his head back and watched with heavy-lidded eyes. Watched what he did
to me. Watched the feelings he drew out of me. Watched my reactions to his
every move, his every light and rough caress. And all while he felt what he
did to me inside. In the quivering spasms that rippled my internal walls. In
the wet sucking grip of my hungry sheath squeezing down on him with more and
more tightness as he slowly built up the pleasure, the wracking tension once
again.
He made love to me like his father and brother fought. With sure grace, with
natural athleticism, with extraordinary physicality, as if his body had moved
this way a million times before. No fumbling, no hesitation.
He’s a virgin. A virgin, a voice inside of me screamed. Had to be. But he
played me like a master violinist played a beloved Stradivarius. With
familiarity. With a skilled touch. With an exploring, swiveling plunge of his
hips that drew forth a muttered gasp, a deep moan from me. That lit me up once
more with a soft, illuminating glow.
A slow withdrawal. Another leisurely swivel-stroke in, that had me mewling and
grasping his arms in breathless pleasure and hardening demand. It was
wonderful and not enough. I rose to my knees, fisted my hands in his hair.
Tightened around him even more, and rocked against him with hard, surging
moves that brought forth his own light again. That made his breath catch and
hold, and his eyes gleam even fiercer.
“No,” he said, his voice so harsh it was almost a growl. “Let me learn you.
See what pleases you.”
“Everything you do pleases me.”
“Then let me do it more.”
“I don’t know if I can take more.”
“You can.” And unvoiced—You will. Those odd bright eyes of his demanded it,
holding me still, almost in thrall as he began to move in me again.
Screamingly slow. Agonizingly gentle. So that I felt every hard slip and slide
of him in and out of me while I trembled and held obediently still, poised
over him.
When he was assured of my compliance, when I ceded control back to him and
harsh primitive triumph glittered in those warrior eyes, he rewarded me by
leaning forward and brushing his bristly beard across my eager pouting nipple,
then taking it into his mouth.
Just wetness, warmth, nothing else. And I gasped, swallowed back a moan of
need. Please.
As if he heard my silent plea, he gave me the suction I needed. A hard sweet
pull that zinged from my breast down to my womb as if the two separate organs
were connected somehow. So that what was done to one affected the other. So
that the light sucking, tugging pull of his mouth upon me was felt not only by
my nipple, but deep inside me also, in that part of me that cried out to be

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filled by him again. Not just by his hard, throbbing length, but what it
ultimately thirsted for—the wetness of his seed.
I trembled and shook and twisted against him. And wound even tighter within
when his light, tracing fingers accidentally grazed over my sensitive rear rim
as he trailed his way from one cheek to the other. He groaned as I
unconsciously clenched around him.
His fingers moved back to trace around my anal pucker, both of us groaning as
he did so. I was shaking, wound up so tight as he played with me there for an
endless moment. Then his other hand moved in front, drifted down through my
silky triangle and explored me there where we were joined. He moved those
light, grazing fingertips along my stretched outer lips, and I tightened even
more, cried out, jerked against him when he traced over my hard, swollen nub.
Like an explorer finding treasure, he returned to the spot, traced over that
tiny sensitive part of my body where so many nerves screamed. His two hands
traced over me, one in front, one in back. And I drew tense, tremblingly
tight, like a bow drawn back by an expert archer, my light spilling out from
me, his light mixing with mine, making the room glow.
Those dancing fingers suddenly stopped. Stilled all movement of hands, but not
of body. His body arched up with sudden thrusting force, plunging up into
mine, filling me with his hard, spearing length once, twice. Three savoring
strokes in that suspended, taut stillness, that spiraling tightness. Then
those fingers moved once more, pressed down firmly over those two spots he had
found, one in front, one in back. And it was this, that sudden pressing
firmness in those twin spots along with the rough-frictioned drive of him deep
inside me that gave me what I needed. Flicked the ignition switch. Made me
blast off.
I cried as I came apart again. As my second climax roared through me in a hot,
convulsive rush. And as I shook and shuddered, my light bursting from me, he
drove into me again and again in a slow, steady rhythm, unhurried, as if he
had all the time in the world to fuck me as he drank down my light, as he
pulled it into himself, dimming my radiance for one brief instant while
brightening his own. Then, as my twitching convulsions lessened, his pace
quickened. His driving thrusts into me grew even more forceful, stronger.
Deeper. His right hand moved down my leg and caressed my foot with the
pleasing strength with which he had gripped my shoulders. With that same
strong firmness and pressure, his thumb pressed down deep and hard into my
sole. He pushed there, right in the center of my foot, and ripped another wash
of splintering sensations through me so intense that it was frightening. With
his other hand he squeezed my swollen clitoris while he speared himself
through my spasming tightness, seating himself home deep inside of me. I came
a third time, explosively. Crying out. Coming apart. Splintering into a
million sundering pieces. I collapsed on top of him, drained, limp, literally
shocked with pleasure, and felt him come inside of me again. Felt the powerful
jetting of his own release.
And as he drank down my light, I drank up his seed.
We lay there, chests heaving, bodies and worlds torn apart and slowly coming
back together, our lights fading. One last glimmer and we no longer glowed.
The light of our pleasure vanished, and I felt the wetness of his seed ooze
out, trickle down my thighs.
My eyes fell upon the innocent foil packet, unopened, unused, lying there
abandoned on the floor. And the cold light of reality set in.
Oh my God. Oh my God. What have I done?

FIVE

I SCRAMBLED UP and off of him, and frantically threw on my clothes while that
refrain ran over and over in my mind. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God! What
have I done?

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“What’s wrong?” Dante demanded, and I realized that I’d been muttering the
words out loud. I shook my head and stumbled to the door, desperate to get
away, my instinctive unease of him twining with fear of what I’d just done.
Behind me chains rattled, jerked harshly as he came up against the restraining
length of them. “What did I do wrong?”
I glanced back, saw his face, harsh and wild, the muscles of his body bunched
tight as he strained against the chains, trying to come after me. His body
glistened—the sweat of his malady mixing with the sweat of the sexual exertion
that had healed him. His male organ, semihard, was wet with our combined
essence, with my fluid and his ejaculated seed that swam even now in me. That
hard male body, that fierce, frightening face, the smell of sex thick and
pungent in the air—I saw it all, smelled it all, and had to get away. Had to
leave. Him. Everything. What I had done.
I slammed out of the room, past the startled faces of his brother, his father.
Then I was outside in the dark and starry night. A cool, cleansing breeze
drifted over me like a soothing hand, easing some of the panic, some of the
madness that had gripped me for a second. Our mother moon, whose light we held
within us, glimmered serenely down from above, her soft lunar rays falling
upon me like the hand of a Madonna soothing her restless child. A comparison
that reminded me starkly of my dilemma. That I may have just gotten myself
pregnant…knowingly. That was the hard part to swallow.
I found a large, flat rock a short distance away from the house and sat there,
my hand drifting down to cover my belly, the gesture part protective, part
horrified. Sounds drifted from the house and I ignored it, shut it out, lost
in my own world, my own tormenting reflections.
A baby. How could I have done that? Risked that?
How could I have not? a voice within me demanded. That dominant part of me
that was woman. That was Monère.
The odds were against my getting pregnant because the Monère are not a fertile
people. It’s hard for our women to get pregnant. But the man whose seed lay
wet and pungent within me came from a line that had proven obviously potent.
Not just one son, but two. Twins.
Shit.
I sat there, lost and alone, for a countless space of time. I don’t know how
many minutes passed before the crunching of footsteps on fallen leaves alerted
me to another’s presence. Sounds that were deliberately made to give me
warning of their approach. Not that I needed it. Even lost in my thoughts as I
was, I would have felt him. Dante. The possible father of my child…or not.
It was with this new and stunning realization in my eyes that I rose to my
feet and turned to face the young man I’d just had sex with: If I became
pregnant, I might not even know who the father of my child was. Dante or
Amber. I’d slept with Amber several days ago, right after Basking.
Dante had showered, shaved, and dressed. His wet hair was slicked back and the
grizzly beard gone from his face, allowing me to see the rough, stark beauty
of his angles. But even groomed and dressed in the trappings of civilization,
nothing could change those eyes. Those pale blue eyes that shimmered with
wildness and aggression barely contained. The madness in them was gone, but
not even sanity could soften the instinctive fright that coursed through my
body like a shocking jolt when I looked into those formidable eyes. Eyes that
I could have sworn I knew. He was unchained, free, and fear suddenly thudded
within me, coursed in a riot through my blood.
He stopped twenty feet away and spread his hands in front of him to show he
was unarmed, that he meant no harm. But my heartbeat did not lessen its
rapid-fire staccato. When he took a step forward, I took a step back. I
couldn’t help myself.
Something moved in his eyes. Hurt, pain. Reciprocal wariness, perhaps. His
eyes dropped down to my hands that I had unconsciously lifted to ward him off,
to keep him back, and his eyes narrowed. Something in him grew very still.
Suddenly aware of what I’d done, I made myself drop my hands back to my sides.
“Are you well now?”

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“Yeah.” But he spoke as if he were troubled, distracted, making no move to
draw closer to me. With effort, he brought his attention back to me. “What
about you? Are you well? Did I hurt you?”
“No,” I said, as gently as I could with all the adrenaline coursing in me.
“Then what’s wrong?”
“I may be pregnant.” My whisper vibrated with the horror I was feeling. “And I
just realized, if I am, I may never know for sure who the father is.”
His attention centered even more sharply on me. “You have another lover?”
“More than one.” A choked sound came out of me that was half-sob, half-laugh.
“But only one before you who could get me with child.” Not Halcyon, my demon
dead lover. Not Gryphon, whose child I had wanted in remembrance of him. Not
Dontaine, with whom I had lain, but not in a way that could result in a child.
“Just Amber. Or you.”
Something flared in those eyes for a moment before he dropped his gaze. His
hands curled into fists, and tension seeped into his body before he
consciously released it with a slow, deep breath.
“Thank you for saving me,” he said, his rough voice deliberately gentle, oddly
formal. “And my deep regrets for any discomfort I may have caused you with my
fumbling. It was not meant intentionally.”
Frightened though I was of him, I pushed aside my distress to soothe his. “You
didn’t cause me any discomfort. Nor was there any fumbling on your part. You
brought me great pleasure. Made me come three times, in fact. How can you
doubt that you pleased me?” I said, shaking my head. “Was that your first
time?”
He cast me an odd look but nodded.
“Well, let’s just say you show a true natural talent,” I said with a wobbly
smile.
“Then why did you run from me?”
My smile disappeared. “Because we didn’t use the condom. It was right there in
my hand. Then your need flared up my own and I felt this terrible, gripping
urge to bear life, to have a baby. It came out of nowhere, ambushed me,
drowned me in it, until I felt as if I would literally die if I didn’t feel
your seed jetting into me. The condom was right there in my hand, and I
deliberately dropped it, let it go. How could I have done that? I don’t even
know myself anymore, who I am, what I’m becoming.”
“Would being pregnant be so bad if that is what your body craves?”
“You don’t understand.” And I couldn’t explain it to him. “It could be
disastrous. Not for me, but for the baby. And I knowingly risked it.”
Even more distressing, I thought I was going crazy. I felt as if I should
recognize Dante. That even though I’d never laid eyes on him before, my body
knew him in some way…and feared him.
“Do I know you?” I felt like an idiot asking him that question, but was
compelled to ask it anyway.
He stilled. Froze in a way that made him seem as if he were not real, not
living. Then he moved, released a breath. He cast me a searing, searching
gaze. Then without a word he turned and walked swiftly away—as if a ghost had
suddenly sprung up before him and he was fleeing it.
Only when he was gone did my heart slow down.
God, I thought. Who the hell are you? How do I know you? And most important of
all: Why do I fear you?

SIX

EVENTUALLY, I WANDERED back to the house. Dante was nowhere to be seen,
deliberately avoiding me, it seemed, to my relief. After a shower, some clean
clothes borrowed from Hannah, and one soothing cup of chamomile tea to settle
my frazzled nerves, I called home. The phone at Belle Vista rang only once
before it was picked up, as if someone had been standing there waiting for it

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to ring.
“Hello,” said a voice abruptly.
“Tomas?” I wasn’t sure if that was who I was speaking to. It sounded like him,
but sharper, crisp, without his usual soft twang and easy way of speaking.
“Mona Lisa?” The shocking loudness of his voice was heard clearly by everyone
in the room, which happened to be the entire Morell family. All but Dante.
I winced. “Yeah, it’s me, Tomas. Is Dontaine there?”
“No. He and everybody else are out looking for you. Where are you?”
“In the next state. In Texas. I’m okay. I, uh, found a healer, and I’m
bringing her and her family back with me. But it might take a little while for
them to pack up everything, and then hours more for us to drive home. I’m
going to try to make it back before sunrise, but don’t worry if I don’t.”
There was just the jagged sound of his breathing for a few long seconds. Then
his voice sounded in my ear again, softer. But it was a harsh softness.
“Worry? Why should we worry? Wiley woke the entire house up and they tracked
your steps back to the woods. They found the scent of two strange men there
and signs of a struggle.” His restraint slipped then. “What the hell happened,
Mona Lisa?”
Oh crap. I could imagine the panic and uproar that had followed. “Listen, I’ll
explain everything when I get back home, I promise.” Hopefully by then
everyone would have calmed down some. Please let it be so. As it was, my raw
nerves couldn’t take Tomas’s distress any longer. I felt oddly fragile, like a
ceramic doll that would crack with any additional pressure. “Call off the
search, Tomas. Tell everybody that I’m okay and that I’ll be back soon. I’m
going to hang up now.”
“Don’t!” Tomas yelled, panic in his voice. “Don’t hang up! Tell me where you—”
Gently, I disconnected.
“Was that your lover?” Quentin asked. He seemed the only one capable of
speaking in the sudden silence. His mother and father looked shocked, as if
what they had heard was not what they had been expecting to hear. Their
surprise surprised me. What was the big freakin’ deal here?
“No, that was Tomas, one of my guards.”
The big man, Nolan, unglued his tongue. “You allow a guard to speak to you
like that?”
“He’s obviously upset,” I said, shrugging. “I think it would be best if we
left here as soon as possible, so my people back home don’t freak out anymore
than they already have. How long will it take for you guys to pack?”
“Hannah’s things are ready,” Nolan said, looking at me in an odd manner.
“Good. What about the rest of you?”
“We’re rogue males,” Nolan said, “who kidnapped you.”
Ah. So this was the reason for their shock.
“I know,” I said. “To save your son. It’s not the first time I’ve had a run-in
with outlaw rogues, or been kidnapped by them. Some have become my dearest
friends.”
“Oh, milady.” Hannah’s voice quavered. “You wish all of us to come with you?”
“Of course. What did you think? That I’d just take you and leave the rest of
your family behind?”
“Yes,” Nolan said. “That’s exactly what we thought.”
They thought I’d take the woman, the valuable healer, and cast aside the men
who loved her. “No, I’d never separate a family.”
“It was the reason we fled,” Hannah said, her voice trembling. “Because our
Queen refused to let Nolan and I marry, even when it was known I was growing
heavy with his child.”
“I thought it was customary for fertile couples to marry?” In the hopes that
they would breed more offspring. Dontaine had explained some of it to me.
“That is the usual custom, if they both wish it, and we did,” Hannah said.
“But our Queen denied us this.”
“Why?”
“Because she desired Nolan for her own bed.”
Husband and wife looked at me questioningly. It took me a second to figure out

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what they were asking, without actually saying it.
“Oh! No, I’d never…He’s a married man!” I squawked, and felt myself blushing.
I took a deep breath and untangled my suddenly clumsy tongue. “You have my
word that I will never ask Nolan to sleep with me or any other woman. I
respect the bonds of matrimony, and appreciate those who honor them.”
“And our sons?” Hannah asked.
“I wouldn’t require it of them, either,” I assured them. But my words actually
seemed to distress rather than please Nolan and Hannah.
“Milady, apart from myself, my sons are the last living descendants of
Lacedaemon,” Nolan said, seeming to expect some sort of reaction from me.
What, exactly, I had no idea.
“I’m sorry. I grew up among humans. My knowledge of Monère history is almost
zilch. I only became aware that people like us existed several months ago.”
“In human Greek history, Lacedaemon was the son of Zeus and Taÿgete,” Nolan
explained. “He was the founder of the city of Lacedaemon, more commonly known
among humans as Sparta.”
“Oh, well, Sparta. Sure, I’ve heard of that.” Who hadn’t? The ancient Greek
city famous for its military—the strict training and the superior soldiers it
raised. And Nolan and his sons were descended from this line. I guess that
explained their unusual fighting skills.
“Lacedaemon was a Full Blood Monère who came from an ancient bloodline of
supreme warriors. He fathered several Mixed Blood sons. Instead of abandoning
them, he built a city-state for them and taught them some of his fighting
skills. Most of the citizens of Sparta had some Monère blood running in them.”
The concept was mind boggling. “Those fierce Spartans were Monère Mixed
Bloods?”
“Alters your view of history, doesn’t it?” Quentin said with a slight smile.
“Greatness runs in my sons’ blood,” Nolan said. No bragging, just a statement
of fact. “They would be worthy of you.”
It hit me then what they wanted and why they were so distressed. They wanted
their sons in my bed. Not out of it.
Oh, cripes!
I struggled with what to say and finally settled on the truth. “Frankly, your
sons can do much better than a Mixed Blood Queen. You know I’m a Mixed Blood,
right?”
Nolan nodded.
“With their lineage and fighting skills, they can probably have their pick of
Queens. Just not me. My bed is full, more than full. And not just by Monère,
but demon dead. I guess you should probably know that I’ve…um, agreed to be
Halcyon’s mate.”
Nolan paled, making me notice only then what I should have noticed before.
That his skin was not the pure lily-white of most Monères. That all of them,
even Hannah, were a light brown shade. “You’re tanned,” I said. “You can walk
in daylight?”
“Like any other Monère can for limited amounts of time,” Nolan answered. “The
few minutes of sun exposure every day—driving my sons to school, picking them
up, and then driving to my business—results inevitably in darkened skin after
several months’ time.” He shrugged and returned to the subject at hand. “The
Halcyon you mention. Do you mean the High Prince of Hell?”
“Yup, that Halcyon. So you see.” And I think they did now. “It would be in
your sons’ best interests to seek another Queen’s bed.” Any other Queen’s bed.
I chewed my lip and continued. “It is my hope that you and Hannah will choose
to make your home with me. And that I can serve as your sons’ re-entry into
Monère society. They should be ready to…I mean, I saw boys younger than them
seeking positions with Queens.” The main position hopefully being over or
under her in bed, though I could scarcely say that to them. But that was the
reality of our Monère society. Virgin boys…I winced at that, wondering if I
had just hurt Dante’s chances of being selected…were taken into a Queen’s bed
at a young and tender age. An arrangement that benefited both parties. The
budding warrior gained power from mating with a Queen, and the Queen gained a

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sexual playmate she was not afraid of, a man just coming into his power,
indulging herself with him until that power grew too threatening for her, or
she tired of him and cast him from her bed.
“My sons are two years past the age of maturity when most young men would seek
to intimately serve a Queen,” Nolan said. “They are, as you say, ready to go
into service.”
“Oh, well, good. The next Council meeting is coming right up in nine days.
They can…” Offer themselves up? “Sign up then at the Service Fair. If they
want to, that is.” I blushed, unable to look at Quentin. “I was just thinking
that the sooner for them, the better.”
Nolan nodded. “You are correct, milady. Indeed. The sooner for them, the
better.”
I took a breath, willed the blush to fade away. “Yes, well, um…all I ask is
that you come and give me a try for a few days. If you’re not happy settling
in my territory, you can seek a position with another Queen of your choosing
at the coming fair, and I will do my best to aid you in that endeavor. I know
it’s not your usual Monère arrangement—a Mixed Blood Queen and a Demon
Prince.” I smiled weakly. Actually, that didn’t sound attractive at all. I
hesitated. “If you and Hannah would rather not join me because of this, if
you’d just rather continue on as you have been doing, I’ll understand.”
“You humble yourself for no reason. You give my sons a chance I never thought
they’d have, and myself a privilege I’d never thought to know again.” Nolan
dropped to his knees and Hannah and Quentin knelt beside him.
“It would be a great honor to serve you, my Queen.”

SEVEN

IT TOOK LESS than an hour to gather up their things. Thankfully, most of their
stuff had already been packed. They’d been planning to leave anyway. Hannah
cooked a steak for Dante, and had him eat it and drink something before we
left. He hadn’t taken the time earlier for sustenance when he had rushed out
to see me. When asked if I cared for some food, I hastily muttered that I
would grab a hamburger on the road, and quickly fled the kitchen.
We were ready to go in short order. One of the two vehicles they had, a Honda
Ridgeline truck, had thick mats and bulky gym bags loaded in the open flatbed,
along with the other packed household stuff. I slid into the front passenger
seat and turned to gaze curiously at the unusual items. The truck was
surprisingly roomy inside—as roomy as a regular car. Nolan took the wheel
while Hannah sat in back. Quentin drove the other car, following us, with
Dante seated beside him. I was grateful they hadn’t put Dante and me together.
When asked what all the mats in back were for, I was told that it was
equipment from the self-defense school they’d operated in their little town.
That was how Nolan and his sons had made their living.
“We taught the use of sword, dagger, and firearms, as well,” Nolan told me as
I blissfully devoured a hamburger we’d gotten at a drive-through. I discovered
that fast food tasted especially good when you hadn’t had any in a long while.
“We even held special classes for the local police,” he added.
I chewed and washed down a mouthful of the steamy burger with a cool sip of
Sprite. “Cops?”
Nolan smiled, probably at the way I’d said the word. “Yes, cops. They made up
over a quarter of my client base, good customers actually. Hannah also offered
her healing services to the local community.”
“You healed humans?” I said with surprise.
“In a much more subtle way, milady,” she said, nodding. “My talent is limited
with non-Monère. More diagnosis, pointing out what is wrong, and the easing of
some of their pain. Sometimes boosting their own natural healing. I give them
herbal infusions to drink while I examine them, and they believe that it is
the herbal tea that helps them.”

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“You seem to have made a comfortable life here,” I observed. “Why were you
planning to leave?”
“We knew we could no longer stay after we brought you here,” Nolan answered.
A germ of an idea was sprouting in my mind. I tried it on, out loud. “Nolan.
How would you like to open up a similar school in my Louisiana territory?”
Nolan glanced askance at me. “For humans?”
“Yes, and some Mixed Bloods I have under my care.”
“I am yours to command, milady.”
I waved his perfunctory comment aside, and continued, warming up to my idea.
“The expense and income would be yours to manage. And any profit would be
yours to keep like before, other than a ten percent cut—the tithing portion I
owe High Court from all my businesses. Would you like to do this?”
He seemed astounded and uncertain. “Yes, of course, milady. But that is not
how things are usually done.”
“The usual way being that the Queen owns everything, everybody works for her
for free, and she provides for their needs. A feudal way of operating that
really should change. And maybe can, beginning with you.”
“But I will not be contributing much to you under those terms,” Nolan said,
troubled.
“You will be contributing more than you know. You will be showing my people
another way to live, a more independent way. And one of the Mixed Bloods you
will be training will be my brother. Teach him how to protect himself, and you
will have served me invaluably. Besides, you’re contributing a healer to our
community.”
Regardless, Nolan insisted that I take twenty percent of the profits. Ten
percent for the tithe, the other ten percent for myself. In addition to that,
he said, “I would extend my services in the training of your men, as well.”
“That’s very generous,” I said, pleased with the offer. “I’ll introduce you to
Dontaine, my master of arms. See what he says.”
Nolan asked me who the drill master was, and the length and frequency and
routine of practice for my warriors. To my shame, I was unable to answer him.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know as much as I should about that.”
“You don’t practice with your men?”
“No.”
“You should,” Nolan said. “You fight well, but your swordplay is crude.”
Nothing like the truth to make you wince. “I haven’t had much practice,” I
said in my own defense.
“You will now” was his ominous reply. I had a feeling that whoever the drill
master had been before, Nolan was the new one now, at least for me, if he had
anything to say about it.
Dawn was just beginning to break when we finally pulled into the long driveway
leading up to the house. We rounded a curve, then Belle Vista, the grand
plantation home, was rising before us. But lovely though the building was, it
was the people streaming down the steps that truly lifted my heart. My family,
my people. And Amber was here! My big, craggy giant. My Warrior Lord, my love.
Happiness swelled my heart.
That happiness faltered a bit, though, when I saw the harshness on his face.
And Amber’s was not the only grim, tight-lipped expression I saw as we pulled
up. Dontaine, tall, fair, and handsome, stood beside Amber, looking like a
thundercloud ready to burst and rain down on us. Flanking them were my guards:
Aquila, the former rogue who had kidnapped me, now one of my most trusted men;
and loyal, plain Tomas, on whom I had hung up the phone. He was looking as
angry as I’d ever seen him. The four of them were an intimidating wall—fully
armed with swords, daggers, and aggressive stances. Behind them, kept safely
back, was my younger brother, Thaddeus. His dark straight hair and almond
eyes, so like mine, grew big with relief as he caught sight of me. Next to him
were Jamie and Tersa, the brother and sister of my heart, the other Mixed
Bloods in my care. Their mother, Rosemary, a Full Blood Monère woman, stood
tall among them. And beside them, guarding them, was Chami, my chameleon, my
deadly assassin.

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“It’s all right,” I said stepping out of the car. “Everything’s o—”
The rest of my words were cut off as Amber grabbed me in a crushing embrace.
Good thing my bruises were gone, healed with the first orgasm Dante had given
me, or I would have been yelping in pain and upsetting my men even more.
“Are you hurt?” Amber demanded, holding me at arm’s length to look me over
from head to toe with a keen, razor-sharp inspection.
I was able to answer him honestly, “No, I’m not hurt. I’m fine.”
Car doors opened and shut, and Dante and Quentin came to stand beside their
father; the truck separated them from my men. Hannah remained in the car per
her husband’s quietly murmured command.
“This is the healer and her family that I told you about,” I said, made
nervous by my men’s continued tension.
“’Tis the same scent from the forest,” Dontaine said. “The intruders.” The
snarled pronouncement had my men drawing their weapons.
“Stand down,” I said sharply. “They are not armed and they offer you no
violence.”
“They wear guns,” Amber rumbled dangerously.
And so they did, in harnesses hidden beneath the light jackets they wore. I’d
totally forgotten about them. How stupid of me. Thankfully, Nolan and his sons
were smarter than I. They made no move to draw their guns. Just stood there, a
solid wall of three.
“Your Queen thinks you dead, Nolan,” Amber said, his eyes fixed on the big
warrior.
“The only way I could have ever left her,” Nolan replied. “It has been long
since I have seen you. You are no longer Amber, but Lord Amber now,” he said,
noting the medallion chain the other man wore, and the greater feel of his
power.
“Did you take Mona Lisa from us?” Amber asked.
“I did,” Nolan answered.
“Why?”
“My son Dante was afflicted with Lunara asseros.”
A ripple of reaction, felt more than seen from my men. Amber’s gaze traveled
over the two young men, coming to rest on Dante without having to be told
which one he was. No need to. His stronger presence, greater than that of his
brother, and my scent which he still carried, identified him readily. Amber
studied him carefully, and was examined with equal intensity in turn.
Abruptly Amber resheathed his sword. The tension lessened palpably as the rest
of my men put away their weapons. They may not have entirely forgiven Nolan,
but at least they understood his actions better now.
“You have a family, Nolan,” Amber said.
“Yes, I have been richly blessed.” At Nolan’s calling, Hannah stepped out of
the car and went to her husband’s side. “This is my wife, Hannah,” Nolan said
proudly. “And my two sons, Dante and Quentin.”
“Welcome.” Amber inclined his head formally to them all, then his eyes
returned to Nolan. “Welcome back into the fold, brother.” The two big men
stepped around the truck and embraced each other in that rough, back-slapping
way of powerful men.
You couldn’t help comparing the two of them. Nolan stood around six two, but
Amber topped him by at least a good four inches. Nolan was big, but Amber was
even bigger.
As if a silent signal had been given, the others rushed down to me, and I was
wrapped in teary embraces. I returned hugs, spoke reassuringly to Rosemary,
Tersa, Jamie, and Thaddeus. Even apologized to Tomas for hanging up on him the
way I had.
Daylight streamed softly over us, and while I enjoyed the feel of the sun’s
warmth upon my skin, I knew that it had to be uncomfortable for the rest of
them.
“Grab what you need,” I instructed Nolan and his family. “You’ll sleep here
tonight until we can settle you into a place of your own.”
Hannah grabbed a satchel smelling of medicinal herbs, and a second light tote.

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Nolan and the boys each took two bags from the car. The heavier, longer one
contained their weapons. The second, smaller bag was filled, no doubt, with
lesser necessities like clothing. I mentally rolled my eyes and shooed
everyone into the house.
If a house could give a sigh, Belle Vista did as we walked through her grand
doors—of happiness, of contentment, of joy. I was back where I belonged with
my people. And like a good Queen, I had brought back even more people to fill
her hallways with.

EIGHT

I SLEPT IN Amber’s arms that day. No scolding, no questions. Just sweet,
blessed sleep. As soon as he wrapped me in the comfort of his big embrace,
with his slow-beating heart thudding gently beneath my ear blocking out all
other sounds in the house, I drifted off to sleep.
My eyes fluttered open as dusk began to fall. Wide awake and refreshed, I left
Amber still sleeping, drifted silently down the stairs, and slipped out the
front door. A few last, lingering rays of sunlight still defiantly painted the
remnants of the day, as if to say, Do not hasten me on my way. I walked across
green grass so lush that it cushioned each footfall, drinking in the
magnificent hues of sunset, the vibrant splashes of color thrown upon the rich
canvas of the sky.
It wasn’t until he spoke that I became aware that another watched the ebbing
day as I did. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” His voice came from the trees lining
the eastern edge of the lawn.
“Dontaine,” I said with surprise and pleasure, and walked across the carpet of
grass to where my master of arms sat against a tree, half-hidden in its
shadows. Sunset’s last faint light fell across the leaves to dapple his skin
with purple-pink hues.
“You can walk in daylight?” I asked.
“Like any other Monère,” Dontaine replied in a voice carefully devoid of
emotion, his eyes lifted to the setting sun. “Not like you, without any pain,
any burning. It stings my skin still.”
I sat on the ground beside him and said softly, “I’m sorry.”
“For what? That I did not receive your gift, your immunity from the sunlight
through our mating? Or for walking so carelessly out of the house like this,
without any guards? Without anyone aware of where you go. Or are you
apologizing for doing that very same thing yesterday, twenty-four hours ago,
allowing yourself to be snatched from us, leaving the entire household in a
state of frenzied panic?”
His voice was deceptively calm. But his eyes…his eyes, when he turned them to
me, were far from calm. He was furious in a way that was even more frightening
than if he had screamed and yelled. Contained fury.
I flushed with shame, with guilt, with knowing that I was wrong. “Dontaine,
I’m very sorry for that.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it, as you humans say!” He lashed out at me with the biting
edge of his emotions unleashed, and I flinched, wisely shut up as he pressed
his lips tightly together, holding back the hot torrent of words just waiting
to spill out. Somehow he managed to swallow them down. His next words came out
in a hoarse, strained whisper. “I promised him that I would guard you with my
life.”
“Who?”
“Halcyon, your Demon Prince. Remember?”
His caustic tone made me wince. “Dontaine, please. Stop.”
“I can’t! It eats at me so. He entrusted you to me, to watch over you when he
could not. And hours later, not even a day later, you are gone. Stolen from us
while we slept.” He looked at me with tormented eyes, a painful mix of guilt
and anguish filling them. “And I was not here. I do not live in this house.

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How can I watch over you if I do not even live here?”
“Dontaine…” My voice trailed away. What could I say after all?
“I am your master of arms by your decree. And your lover by the generosity of
your heart. Let me stay here with you, Mona Lisa.”
The open vulnerability in that proud face hurt me more than any scalding anger
ever could. I gave beneath the gentle force of it with a yielding sigh. “All
right. Yes. You can stay here at the house.”
“In Gryphon’s room, next to yours,” he said. “I’ve spoken to Amber and have
his agreement. He wishes it, too.”
Ah, so that was why Amber had held back on the tongue lashing. He knew
Dontaine would deliver it to me with far more effective results. And that,
loaded down with guilt, it would be hard for me to deny Dontaine this request.
My men were learning how to handle me.
But at the thought of someone moving into Gryphon’s quarters, my heart twinged
painfully. He’s dead but not really gone, I told myself. Just moved to another
realm. And it would hurt my new lover more were I not to let him use that
empty room.
I nodded my consent.
“Thank you,” Dontaine said in a soft rush of relief, and brushed trembling
lips across mine. I felt his weariness then, beating down upon him as we
touched, as that electric spark of sensation jumped between us almost
sluggishly.
“Did you sleep?” I asked, pulling back.
He shook his head and smiled sadly. “How could I when no one else was
watching? When someone could lure you out? Or you could simply wake early,
before others, and wander out as you just did.”
“I’m used to taking care of myself, Dontaine.”
“You did not even scan your surroundings. You were not aware I was outside
with you until I spoke.”
I flushed. “Very careless of me, I know. I just feel…safe here.”
“And we can make it so, if you will allow us. With but a few simple measures.”
I’d refused it before when he had suggested it. “There’s no need, with three
warriors living in the house. Four now with you.”
“There is every need when they are all sleeping and you are not.” Some of the
bite leaked back into his voice. “Please, do not hinder me in my duty. A
simple rotating watch, that is all I ask.”
“Not much, just moving into the house and setting up a watch guard,” I
grumbled, but pecked a light, affectionate kiss on his lips. “Very well.
Anything else you might want to ask for while I am in the mood to give in to
any and all requests?”
“Not at the moment. But I’m sure I shall think of something later when I am
less fatigued.”
“Silly me, then, for wanting you to get some rest. Come on.” I pulled my weary
master of arms to his feet. “You need to sleep.”
“Lie with me?”
“Hah. See? You’ve already thought of something more to ask for,” I teased
gently as we walked back to the house.
“Just rest beside me for a while. Until the others awake,” he asked softly as
we made our way to the guest room on the lower floor.
“Sure.”
Of all the things he had asked for, that was the easiest to grant.

I LAY QUIETLY in Dontaine’s arms as he drifted off to sleep, finding a
different sort of comfort with him. The comfort of bringing my warrior rest,
easing his soul temporarily from the burden of my care entrusted to him by
Halcyon and by his own heavy mantle of responsibility as my master of arms.
He’d tiptoed around me. They all had these past few weeks after I’d returned
to them once the storm of my grief over Gryphon’s death had broken and passed.
But I was stronger now, less fragile, and they were treating me as such,
making demands once more.

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“You eat that, now. All of it,” Rosemary said at dinner that night, after all
had risen to break fast, even Dontaine, who had managed to catch a few hours
of sleep. Rosemary had been a cook at High Court. She had left her coveted
position there to follow me out to this hot and humid southern clime because
of her Mixed Blood children, Jamie and Tersa. Because she knew I would do my
best to protect them. At least you’ll try, she’d said. No one else will do
even that.
She was a natural, caring mother. And let me tell you, that was a rare thing
among the Monère, at least toward their Mixed Blood offspring, which were
often looked upon as little more than garbage to be gotten rid of.
She turned the brunt of her mothering nature on me now. “Eat,” she said, and I
did. Not a hard thing to do when the food was so delicious. Tender roasted
lamb with mashed potato, rich gravy, and the light salad greens that I
enjoyed. Rosemary had taken over the general management of the household upon
our arrival here. Good thing, because I wouldn’t have known what to do or who
to ask to do it. Though she no longer cooked, she oversaw the kitchen, her
first love, with a keen, critical eye.
I ate to please her and myself, and because it was wisest not to go against
her in this matter that fell in her domain—a domain over which she ruthlessly
presided, and which basically stretched to include any and all sundry matters
pertaining to the household. Not only did I fear her tongue lashing, which
could be quite blunt and biting, but one tended to fear her physically as
well. She was huge, both in height, almost six feet tall, and in girth. She
was built like an Amazon, with strong, capable hands that could wring a
squawking chicken’s neck with one easy twist. I’d seen her do it once.
Only when I cleaned my plate, the last one to finish, did she release us from
the table. Hard to believe that cheerful, freckled Jamie, reed tall and
slender, and tiny, petite Tersa, walking beside me, had come from her massive
body.
“Is Wiley all right?” I asked Tersa now. Wiley was actually short for Wild
Boy—what I had called the feral Mixed Blood that the previous Queen had left
behind as a snarling welcome present for me. He’d been half-starved and
completely wild, having grown up in the swamps, abandoned there by his Monère
mother.
Wiley, who was no older than thirteen or fourteen, had bonded with the tiny
Tersa, trusting her as he trusted no one else.
“He was upset but unhurt,” Tersa said in that soft way she had of speaking.
“He led us to where you were taken in the forest and did his best to tell us
what happened.” Meaning that he had come to the house, dragged Tersa out into
the woods, and the others had followed.
“He can talk?” I asked with lifted brow.
“A few words that I taught him. He learns quickly,” Tersa said with a smile.
That was one of the changes the wild boy had wrought in her, those smiles. “He
showed us what happened, mostly through gestures. Then he left. He didn’t
stay.”
“He’ll be back,” I assured her. He was drawn as irresistibly to quiet, solemn
Tersa as she was to him.
“I know,” she said with simple confidence, and quietly slipped away.
Our guests, the Morells, following behind us, watched our small byplay with
interest. I sensed curiosity from Quentin, watchfulness from Dante, and
puzzlement from Nolan and Hannah. Couldn’t blame them. The dynamics in this
household were puzzling even to me, always shifting as we all tried to find
the harmony that was necessary for a happy home. And that was what I was
trying to make this, a happy home for all of us…adding one more to the mix
this morning—Dontaine. Rested and fed, he was much more cheerful, eager to see
to the new arrangements we had agreed upon.
As good a time as any to debrief him on the past day’s events, and to talk to
him about Nolan. Amber and the rest of my guards needed to be debriefed also.
Our meeting took place in the front parlor, and if Hannah was unsettled by all
the male testosterone squeezing the large room small, she didn’t show it. I

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guess she was used to it, having spent the last twenty years being the sole
woman in a household of men. She sat serenely as I explained to my guys what I
should have explained the previous day but had been too tired to. I told them
about the snatch, my breaking free, falling into the river, and the fight with
the other group of outlaw rogues.
“They were in our territory?” Dontaine asked, frowning.
“Yes, near the border fringing Texas,” I said.
“I’ll bring some men and see to them tonight,” he said curtly.
“Have they bothered us or disturbed any humans?”
“Not that I am aware of.”
“Then there is no need to.”
“They are rogues,” Dontaine said. As if that statement said it all.
“Who have harmed no one,” I returned.
“They threatened you.”
“Because I literally washed up in their laps. Who could blame them? If they’ve
harmed no one, we will offer them no harm in turn. Besides, I doubt they’re
still there.”
Nolan concurred with me. “They will have left the area by now.”
“I should have been aware of them,” Dontaine said, revealing the core of his
frustration. What really ate at him.
“Do you perform regular sweeps of your outer area?” Nolan asked.
Dontaine eyed the bigger man with arrogance. “Every fortnight.”
“If you like, I’ll be happy to come along with you on your next patrol. Show
you what to look for.”
Pride warred with need for a moment. Practicability won out. “Your assistance
would be most welcome,” Dontaine said stiffly.
As good a lead as any for what I had to say next. Keeping my fingers crossed,
I told them how Nolan had supported himself operating his self-defense school,
and that I had asked him to set one up locally. “He will not just run the
place, but own it, keeping all the profit as before, except for a twenty
percent portion. Ten percent of that will go toward High Court’s per annum
tithe.”
This didn’t just surprise everyone, it shocked them. They looked at me as if I
had suddenly sprouted two heads.
“Why would you do this, Mona Lisa?” It was Amber who asked. Amber who ruled
the western Mississippi part of my territory for me. He seemed truly curious,
wanting to know my reasoning.
“Because Nolan and his family have managed to support themselves for over
twenty years this way. Why should I strip them of this hard-earned
independence and expect them to go back to being wholly dependent on me for
everything they eat and drink and wear? What does it hurt me to let them
continue on as they have, and share a little in their profit?”
“You wish them to remain separate from our community?” Chami, my chameleon,
asked. He was six feet tall, with a lean, wiry build like a greyhound. With
his almost boyish slenderness and curly brown hair, one could be fooled into
thinking that he was just an average guard and not very powerful, at that. But
that would have been a sore miscalculation. He was a chameleon, old both in
years and experience, able to blend in with his environment, become invisible.
And even more deadly, he was able to mute his presence so that he could creep
up silently on his target, unseen, unfelt, until he killed you. The perfect
assassin. At the moment, though, with his violet eyes as puzzled as the rest
of his fellow guards, he looked little older than Nolan’s twenty-year-old
sons.
“No, Chami. They will be full members of our community, sharing in the
benefits and responsibilities.”
“What particular responsibilities, milady?” Tomas asked, his voice once more
flowing with that easy Southern twang. With his wheat-colored hair and light
brown eyes, he was the plainest looking among my men. Sweet, honest, loyal
Tomas. Plain only in looks, not in his presence, which reflected his long span
of years and accumulated power. All the guards here in this room, my most

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trusted men, were older in years, strong in power. The type usually discarded
by their Queens. Or killed by them.
Instead of answering Tomas’s question, I asked one of my own. “Do any of you
besides Amber know Nolan?”
“I know of him,” Chami answered. “He is reputed to be a great warrior, a most
gifted fighter.”
“I saw him fight once long ago. They say none can best him with a sword,” said
Aquila, speaking in his usual precise and clipped manner. Everything about
Aquila was neat and tidy, including his thin mustache and Vandyke beard. His
gentlemanly appearance was odd only if you knew what he’d been before. Not
just an outlaw rogue, but a rogue bandit serving under the infamous Sandoor.
The confusion cleared up, though, once you knew what Aquila had been prior to
becoming an outcast rogue—not only a warrior, but a man of business, a
profession much more suited to his precise and tidy nature. Aquila and my
brother, Thaddeus, had overseen all my business affairs in my absence. Were
still continuing to do so, actually.
“I’ve seen them fight, also,” I said. Had in fact briefly fought Quentin,
though I thought it prudent not to bring that up just now. “And I’m impressed.
Nolan has graciously offered his help in training our men. Dontaine, the
guards’ training falls under your province, right?”
Dontaine nodded.
“I’ll leave it to you then to see how best to use them.”
“Them? His sons also?” Something flickered in Dontaine’s eyes, and I wondered
for a moment if he might be jealous or threatened by Quentin and Dante. Or
rather more specifically, by Dante.
“I misspoke. Just Nolan. Quentin and Dante will be—” I still didn’t know quite
how to say it. “—seeking positions with other Queens at the next Service
Fair.”
Something eased in Dontaine and I knew then that he had felt threatened by my
intimacy with Dante, and wanted to laugh…or maybe cry. If Dontaine knew how
much I feared Dante—instinctively, unreasonably, something I’d been able to
hide thus far—he would not have wasted any time at all worrying.
“Do the men have practice tonight?” I asked.
“We train every night.” Something I would have known had I been paying any
attention, which I obviously hadn’t.
“Fine. His sons can join the other guards in practice, and you can assess
Nolan’s skill and see how best you would like to work with him. If you do not
wish to involve Nolan in the men’s training, I will abide by your decision,
Dontaine. Hannah’s healing talent alone is more than enough contribution to
our people.” That was a fact no one could dispute.
Dontaine inclined his head, pleased that I was leaving the final decision in
his hands, and seemingly reassured by it.
“I will be happy to accept the assistance of one of whom everyone, including
my Queen, speaks so highly,” Dontaine said, confirming that any reticence he
had felt resided with the young virile sons, not the married father. “Will you
come watch practice tonight?” he asked me. “The men and I would be pleased to
see you there.”
There was only a brief pause before I nodded. Curiosity to see how Nolan and
his sons fared against my guards won out over my instinctive need to avoid
Dante.

TRAINING, I FOUND out, took place in the twilight hours just before dawn,
after the men had finished their patrols and other duties.
Amber had to leave before then, and return to the small slice of my territory
that he ruled on my behalf. He’d left there abruptly when he had learned of my
disappearance.
“I will return and make sure that Nolan does not bring you more profit with
his single twenty percent than I do with all of my businesses that you have
entrusted me with,” Amber said with a tiny smile.
My giant had made a joke, I realized, and felt tears prick my eyes.

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“Why do you cry?” Amber asked, lifting my face gently to his.
“Because you’re leaving.”
“Do you wish me to stay?”
Yes, stay with me always. “No, go back to your people.”
“They are your people, Mona Lisa, as am I. You do not have to wait for me to
return here. You could come down and acquaint yourself with the businesses and
people in that part of your territory.”
I shook my head. “No, I can’t go back to that place. Not yet.” It was where
Gryphon had been killed and bad memories still lingered there for me. To turn
our thoughts away from that, I brought up what I had been considering for
quite some time now.
“I will be petitioning the Queen Mother to make the Mississippi portion of my
territory officially yours, Amber. Your rule, separate from mine.”
Amber stilled. “There is no need to do that,” he said. But he was wrong.
“There is every need. You are my backup for our people. I want to know that
there’s someplace safe for them to go if anything should happen to me.”
“Nothing will happen to you,” Amber said gruffly.
But so much already had, I thought sadly.
He stroked a gentle hand down my melancholy face. “Dontaine is now by your
side. I am pleased that you are allowing him to take up residence in the
house.”
“You don’t mind?” But my real question was: How did he feel about my taking
Dontaine as a new lover? We had not spoken of it yet.
“No, I do not mind,” Amber said softly. “He is a good man and a strong
warrior.”
“And Halcyon. Did Dontaine tell you of my arrangement with him?”
Amber’s eyes darkened with the mixed feelings he had always had about the
Demon Prince. “I know of what you have agreed upon.”
“Do you approve of that as well?”
“It is not for me to approve or disapprove,” Amber said neutrally.
Smacking his thick arm, I glared up at my giant. “Don’t give me that bullshit.
Tell me what you think.”
His eyes crinkled as he grinned down at me. Amused, I think, more by the girly
way I’d hit him than my unladylike language. “Very well. I believe that the
protection Halcyon offers by his public claim of you will be a good thing.
Hurting you will risk his wrath. But I also think your relationship with the
Demon Prince is a dangerous thing. Not just because you are a way to get to
Halcyon, but because of the nature of demons themselves. They are blood
drinkers, Mona Lisa.”
He hardly needed to tell me that. I was achingly aware of that fact.
“And they are dead, truly dead, while you are of the living.”
Not entirely true anymore. And one of the reasons why I wanted Amber safe and
far away from me.
“Many Monères will be outraged by your union,” Amber continued. “And they will
fear you even more because of this alliance.”
“Does it matter? You just said that hurting me will be risking Halcyon’s
wrath.”
“That only means they will not risk doing so openly. They will be more devious
if they choose to move against you.”
“Well. Isn’t that a thrilling thought?” I said dryly.
“Why could Halcyon not simply be with you discreetly?” Amber asked. “Why must
he lay so public a claim on you?”
“He has to,” I told him softly, “for my protection.”
“You are in danger?” Amber’s face darkened.
I am the danger, I thought.
“Not from anything that you or anybody here can protect me from,” I told him.
“Things are changing in me, Amber. Having Halcyon publicly claim me as his
mate is more like a necessary diversion.” And would become even more so as the
changes occurring in me became more apparent. “It will keep me safe.”
“I am not the one being ambiguous now,” Amber rumbled.

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“It’s a demon matter,” I said solemnly, with utmost seriousness. “If I speak
of it to anyone, I risk my life as well as the one I tell. Just know that
whatever happens, none of it is Halcyon’s fault. It’s mine, through something
I did.”
“Mona Lisa—”
“Please, do not press me on this matter.”
Tight furrows of frustration cut deep into that dear, craggy face. I traced
over them with a finger, trying to smooth them away. When that didn’t work, I
drew his head down to me and, stretching up on tippytoes, kissed him.
“Don’t be mad at me,” I whispered against his lips.
He kissed me tenderly back, his voice deep and rough. “I am not mad. Just
concerned.”
“I’m safe for now. I promise.” For now being the operative words here.
Couldn’t promise about later. Only time would tell.
“Are you happy ruling?” I asked, needing to know.
Amber’s harsh face gentled. “Yes, I enjoy it. I like the challenge, making the
decisions, bearing the responsibilities. But I hate being apart from you. You
have given me a bittersweet gift, my love.”
“Most things in life are.” I gave him one last kiss. “Go on.” Stepping back
away from him, I wrapped my arms around my waist so I would not cling to him,
beg him not to go. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Soon,” he promised, and left.

NINE

TO OCCUPY MYSELF, and because I had skirted my duties as Queen long enough, I
spent the next five hours with Rosemary, trailing behind her, learning not
just her routine but that of the other various staff she introduced me to. We
went over the household accounts. Then, even more tediously, and therefore
good penance serving, we went over her first love, the kitchen, an empire unto
its own.
Rosemary was delighted with my interest, the first time I had shown any, and
enthusiastically flooded me with details. As big and as intimidating as her
physical self was, inside she was a warm and caring person who ruled over her
domain with a blunt tongue and a benevolent iron hand. Belle Vista sparkled
under her care, from the spotless mantel in the dining room to the huge
chandelier dominating the foyer, all two hundred dangling crystals gleaming
with proud and pristine glitter.
“You’ve done a wonderful job, Rosemary. Thank you for stepping in like you
did. I wouldn’t have known what to do without you.”
Rosemary waved her hands dismissively. “Mostly a matter of training good
staff.”
“And seeing to a thousand details, and making a million important decisions.
You’ve made this a wonderful home for us all.”
“Thank you, milady. But you are the heart of it, around which we all gather.”
Her words panged me. Brought tears to my eyes. “Oh, Rosemary. I’ve been a
lousy heart.” Sadness and guilt over Amber swamped me—how I kept him apart
from me. More guilt over how I had neglected everything and everyone these
past several weeks…with not one word of complaint uttered from my people.
“You’ve a grand heart, milady. It is a privilege for me and my children to
serve you.”
At the mention of Jamie and Tersa, concern for them snaked into me. I gripped
the hands of the woman who had spread her love so generously in a blanket that
enveloped not just her own Mixed Blood children but the young Mixed Blood
Queen she had taken under her wing as well. She’d been more of a mother to me
in the short time I’d known her than my real one would ever be.
“Things are changing, Rosemary. Beyond what I can control.”
“That is the nature of life, ever changing,” Rosemary said with kindly wisdom.

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“Where are Jamie and Tersa?”
“I sent Tersa with a couple of girls to help settle Healer Hannah and her
family into the house down the road. Jamie is outside working on the lawn.”
“I thought they were studying for their GED.”
“They sat for it last month. The results should be in soon.”
Life had continued on around me, it seemed. I was glad. “And college?”
“They’ve applied to several local ones.”
“What did they list as their previous education?” I asked, curious because
there was no formal schooling among the Monère—not enough children for that.
Jamie and Tersa had been tutored at High Court by a Learned One in reading,
writing, and basic math.
“Home study. ’Twas what your brother, Thaddeus, advised. He and Aquila
procured all the records and recommendations needed. Very resourceful, the two
of them are,” said the former cook with a twinkle in her eyes.
Thaddeus and Aquila, my unofficial business managers. They were slotted next
for a visit. But that was for another night. I’d tortured myself enough
already tonight. On to another part of my Queenly duties. A much more fun
part.
“The guards will begin their training practice soon. I’d like you, Jamie, and
Tersa to come watch it with me.”
“Now why ever would you want us to be doing that?” Rosemary asked, resting her
big hands on her ample hips.
“Hannah’s husband is setting up a self-defense school in the local community.”
“Among humans?” she asked, eyebrows rising high on her ruddy face.
“Uh-huh. That’s how they made their living before. Once Nolan gets his school
up and running, I’d like Jamie and Tersa to train there with him. You have to
see how well Nolan and his sons fight. They’re incredible.”
“Milady, Jamie and Tersa have already been taught some basic knife work by
Chami, and a good teacher he’s been to them. But my children are Mixed Bloods.
Their strength will never be more than human strong, and my Jamie is never
going to be a guard. I do not see the use in more training.”
“Nolan doesn’t just teach self-defense. He also instructs in weapons training.
Guns,” I told her. “Guns are a good equalizer for those with lesser strength.
I need to know that Jamie and Tersa can protect themselves.”
“Well, why didn’t you say that sooner,” Rosemary said. “Learning how to shoot
a gun sounds like a grand idea, milady.”

TEN

EVEN WITH ROSEMARY, Jamie, and Tersa accompanying me, I felt awkward. Like a
stranger intruding. It was a feeling that grew even heavier as we made our way
onto the practice grounds, the same circle where, once a month when the moon
rode full and high in the midnight sky, all my people gathered to Bask.
Men were scattered around, stretching, conversing, sharpening their weapons. I
glimpsed Nolan and his sons, and the familiar faces of Dontaine, Chami, Tomas,
and Aquila. The rest of them, however, were strangers to me. Their easy
chatter died away as the men became aware of us.
What an odd lot we must have looked, a Mixed Blood Queen accompanied by her
Mixed Blood waifs. Rosemary was the only Full Blood among us.
“I hope you weren’t waiting for us,” I said as Dontaine came forward to greet
us.
“Not at all.” Catching my hand in a courtly gesture, he placed it upon his
arm, and led me into the woodland clearing with as much pride and formality as
if we were being presented at High Court.
“The men are just warming up,” Dontaine said. “They’re excited, knowing that
you would be here tonight, watching them.”
If they were excited, they did not show it. A sea of male faces—there must
have been over a hundred of them—turned to us. Hushed silence rang the air. It

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was as if the silent echoes of an unheard bell had tolled, calling them to
attention. As if now that the Queen and her civilian entourage had arrived,
all the guards had to watch what they said and did. Gone was the easy
camaraderie with which they had spoken and interacted, vanished completely
like smoke whisked away by a strong wind.
I swallowed. Gestured toward them. “Continue on, please.”
They simply stared back at me, unmoving. Making me wonder if I shouldn’t have
said, “At ease, men,” instead. Maybe they would have understood that better.
“This is Rufus, my drill master,” Dontaine said, stopping before a short,
barrel-chested man with hair gone completely gray, denoting his advanced age,
over two hundred years old—that was when our hair started to whiten. His was a
face I remembered seeing the night they had come to my rescue after I had been
captured by Mona Louisa, the former blond bitch ruler here. She hadn’t been
too thrilled with me taking over her territory, and had tried to get it back
by eliminating me.
“I remember you.” With a pleased smile, I took the drill master’s hand,
clasping it with gratitude. The gesture seemed to surprise him. “You and your
men helped rescue Prince Halcyon and me. I never got the chance to thank you
for it afterward.”
Rufus blushed beet-red. Slipping his hand from mine, he mumbled, “’Twas my
duty and honor, milady.”
I smiled. “An awkward one, I imagine. Having to save your new Queen from your
old Queen.”
Someone snickered, and like that, the easiness of the night was restored. The
men moved about, making quips and snide comments about those who had fought
that night. And how well or how lousy each had fared.
“Skewered like a kebab” was one comment that floated to my ear. I didn’t know
if the man was referring to himself or to his opponent.
Rufus nodded to me with an appreciative light in his eyes that seemed to say,
Well done, milady.
Turning to his men, he called out, “All right, you lazy louts. Fall into your
drill groups. I want the new lads with the other boys. Nolan, I’m putting you
with the senior group.”
The men fell into three formations shaped much like a whale—smaller at the
head and tail. The end groups consisted of the young boys and senior warriors,
respectively, with the bloated middle group being the largest: warriors older
than the teenage boys in the first group, but younger and less seasoned than
the senior group, which was comprised entirely of my contribution of
men—Chami, Aquila, Tomas, and Nolan. The power emanating from the four of them
was richer, stronger, like the heady scent of sweet wine squeezed from grapes
fully ripened and matured. Without my additions, Dontaine and Rufus would have
been the only two powerful warriors here. Two to my four. And that was without
counting my two strongest, my Warrior Lords—Gryphon, who had become demon
dead, and Amber, who ruled my Mississippi slice.
No wonder some of the other Queens had feared me. I could almost see their
reasoning. If I surrounded myself with such strong men, so many of them, what
did that speak of my own power, my own abilities?
Therein lay the key difference between me and other Queens. I did not fear my
men being stronger than I. Did not see them as threats to watch out for,
competitors to cut down. I saw them as friends, allies, lovers. Men who wanted
to protect me, not hurt me.
The men broke up into pairs, spreading out, and soon the clash of metal filled
the air as they commenced sword practice. Rosemary, Tersa, and Jamie’s eyes
were fixed on the senior group, watching Nolan. My own eyes drifted to the
younger group, which had yet to begin their practice. They stood waiting for
the crusty drill master to make his way down to them. There were eight of
them, ranging from what looked to be as young as twelve to as old as
seventeen, perhaps. The addition of Quentin and Dante was, in my opinion, like
throwing in lions with the lambs. But I understood Rufus’s reasoning. They had
to start from the bottom. It was responsible, wise even, I realized as Rufus

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passed out wooden swords to the boys. He wanted to see how Dante and Quentin
fared with practice weapons before letting them drill with real swords as the
other men did.
Quentin was paired up with a younger boy who looked to be about sixteen. Dante
was matched with the oldest lad, the boy whose age I had pegged around
seventeen. He was as tall as Dante but far more slender, as if his body mass
had yet to catch up with his height growth. Dante was built much more solidly.
And aside from the physical difference, there was a confidence to the way
Dante moved that set him apart even more markedly. As if he was older than
them not only in age—a few scant years in difference—but in experience.
As if Dante felt my eyes upon him, he turned. Our gazes met, and a shiver of
apprehension skittered down my spine like the trailing footprints of a ghost.
Without breaking eye contact, he stabbed the blunt tip of the wooden sword
into the ground and took off his jacket. Metal bracelets hugged his forearms,
different, darker than what his brother and father had worn, made from an
unusual burgundy-colored alloy. They were as primitive an adornment on him as
the gold bar piercing his ear. With the jacket stripped away, he took up his
sword and turned back to his practice partner with a cool nod.
A quick glance at the others showed that neither Quentin nor Nolan wore their
wrist guards. Just Dante. Then all thoughts scattered as I watched Dante
fight. He stood with relaxed poise, countering the other boy’s blows easily,
blocking his strikes with minimal effort. One, two, three countering hits.
Then, as he had with me, he took control. Two powerful forward lunges like a
cobra suddenly striking, and the boy was on the ground, his weapon knocked
from his hand, Dante’s wooden sword tip pointed at his heart. Quentin disarmed
his opponent almost as quickly, though with less coiled violence.
A quiet word from Rufus, and Quentin and Dante moved to the middle group.
Wooden swords were traded for real swords, and a pair of young guards were
broken apart, one paired with Quentin, the other with Dante.
By outward appearance, they were more evenly matched. I knew better, though.
I’d seen Quentin fight before, had caught a glimpse of Dante’s ability just
now, and was both frightened and eager to see more.
What else can you do? I wondered. How well do you fight with a real weapon?
Show me.
He did. Again, those few testing strikes and parries, feeling out his
opponent. Then he took control, setting the pace, increasing the tempo and the
force of the blows. Whereas Quentin fought with flowing grace, like a song, a
dance, poetry in motion, Dante fought with brute cutting force. He fought as
if the man before him was not a sparring partner but an enemy in truth. He
moved with the same fluid grace as his twin, but whereas Quentin was like
cool, clear water, Dante was like the raging rapids. Savage, lethal, deadly.
As I watched him fight, something inside me whispered, I know you. I’ve met
you before.
In no time, Dante disarmed his opponent, his sword, this time, stopped a bare
inch from his neck. My own neck tingled in a memory flash of pain, here and
then gone, distracting me, pounding my heart, so that I hardly noticed when
Quentin defeated his partner.
Rufus grunted, narrowed his eyes, and walked Dante and Quentin down the line
of sparring men to a pair all the way at the other end, men older in age,
whose power thrummed greater than the Morell brothers. But it wasn’t power
Rufus was trying to match up, so much as weapons’ skill.
The two men broke apart, and eyed the brothers curiously.
“Want us to have a go at these two young lads here, Rufus?” asked the bigger
of the two guards, grinning. He had dark curly hair and was as tall as Dante
but an entire width larger, outweighing the “young lads,” as he called them,
by almost a hundred pounds. His arms were massive and his thighs were well on
their way to becoming tree trunks. If one were to judge someone’s age by the
feel of their power—not always an accurate gauge, granted—I’d have guessed him
at close to seventy or eighty years old.
“Aye, Marcus.” Rufus nodded. “And no holding back. I be wanting you and Jayden

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here to show me whether or not I should be moving these two young ’uns up to
the next group.”
It was a statement guaranteed to wipe the grin off of Marcus’s face, and
Jayden’s as well. Jayden stood slightly shorter, just shy of six feet, and was
built along less bulky lines than his bullish partner. But he, too, felt older
in years.
Rufus’s words snapped the two of them to full attention. Because what the
drill master was really implying was that the two “young ’uns” were better
than they were. Good enough, perhaps, to practice with the senior men.
They paired off in grim silence, Dante with Marcus, Quentin with Jayden. Once
their swords engaged, there was no holding back as per Rufus’s instructions.
It was fighting that was almost frightening to behold. Whirling movements,
dangerous flashing steel. Rufus came at Dante with full slashing force, and
Dante smiled as if finally set free, his sword singing in turn, an eager,
intent look in those pale eyes.
Metal clashed against metal, the usual sounds. Then came the sound of
something new, something that caught everyone’s attention. A lighter, higher
resonance. Almost a clinking chime as Dante caught Marcus’s sword against his
metal bracelet, deflecting the blow in a most unexpected manner. Dante’s sword
darted forward and Marcus leaped back. The burly warrior gazed down at the
neat cut that gaped open his shirt front, exposing the muscled slabs of his
belly. The white skin itself was uncut.
“Neat trick.” Marcus grinned, teeth bared, his dark eyes lighting up with the
pleasure of a worthy challenge. “Let’s see you do that again, boy.” He lunged
forward, a big bear of a man, his full power and weight behind the thrust. The
high chiming clink sounded again as Dante deflected the blade past him with
his right wrist guard. A quick turn and twist like the steps of a ballet, a
lethal one, and Dante was suddenly behind Marcus, the edge of his own sword
stopped a hair’s breadth away from the thick neck.
Complete silence for one long moment, then big, bullish Marcus dropped his
weapon. “And I’m dead.” He turned around slowly, unarmed. “Witch’s tit,”
Marcus said, grinning. “That’s some real nice moves you’ve got there, Dante
boy. Course, you’d be minus a hand now, if your aim with those fancy cuffs was
off by a tad.”
“True,” said Dante, lowering his sword. “Lucky, I guess.”
“Lucky, my balls,” muttered Jayden. He and Quentin had stopped their fighting
to watch the other two. As had all the rest of the men the moment that first
clinking chime had sounded in the air.
“You fight like the Lacedaemons of old,” said Chami, my chameleon. He was tall
and boyishly slender, but his voice held the chill of death, stilling
everyone. “You are descended from that line?” He asked the question of Nolan,
with whom he had been sparring.
“Yes,” Nolan replied, eyeing the smaller man warily. “It is not common
knowledge among the other Queens I served. But Queen Mona Lisa knows of my
lineage.”
He’d only told me in a bid for his sons, casting it out as enticement for me
to take them into my bed. Or maybe Nolan hadn’t tried to hide it from me
simply because I’d already seen the unusual, distinctive manner in which they
fought.
“Of all the Queens, she is one you should have kept this knowledge from,”
Chami said. His words puzzled me as much as they did Nolan.
“Why do you say this, Chameleo?” Nolan asked, calling Chami by his full name.
A name that stated what Chami was, and what he did. Chameleon. Assassin.
“You do not know, do you?” Chami asked.
“Explain yourself, chameleon.”
Chami turned his gaze back to me. “Mona Lisa. If you will please show him your
hands.”
Feeling something almost like dread well up in me, I lifted my hands and
turned my palms out to him. When Nolan caught sight of the pearl-like moles
nestled in my palms, his sun-darkened face whitened, became ash pale. He

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looked from me to his son. To Dante, who watched us with his pale blue eyes
glittering and gleaming like shards of ice melting beneath the sun’s brilliant
light.
Chami quoted the following words in an almost singsong manner, reciting them
like an old familiar song. “With pale eyes touched by the faint color of the
sky, the fierce son of Barrabus slew our heart, our hope, our Warrior Queen.”
Hearing that name, Barrabus, something tingled to life within me. It was a
name I’d never heard before. By the same token, deep in the soul of me, I knew
and recognized it somehow.
The charged tension between Chami and Nolan suddenly grew thicker, more
threatening. Reacting to that incipient promise of violence, Tomas and Aquila
moved swiftly in front of me, as did Dontaine, though he looked as confused as
everyone else. It was like watching a play that had suddenly, unexpectedly,
veered away from its usual dialogue and storyline. Only Nolan looked as if he
understood it. And Dante. From whom men were protecting me—as if he were some
horrible threat.
“Chami,” I said, trembling from something right there, hovering on the cusp of
my awareness, tickling my memory, but still just beyond reach. “Explain this.
What’s going on?”
It was Dante who answered. The words he spoke were almost lyrical, and his
voice, fully recovered now, was smooth and rich, a sharp contrast to the harsh
stillness of his face, the bitter fierceness of his glittering eyes. “Long ago
on another planet, in another world, in a time of great strife among our
people, there rose a Queen named Mona Lyra. She bore the marks of the moon’s
blessing in her hands. The Moon Goddess’s tears, they were called, given to
her by a mother crying over the blood being shed by her children, one against
another, crystallized and captured in a woman’s hands, giving her great gifts
and powers as healer and fighter both. A Warrior Queen.”
The first time I’d met Gryphon, he had spoken of such women in the past
bearing the same marks as I. Women who had been both blessed and cursed by
their gifts, I remembered.
“What does that have to do with you?” I asked. “With us?”
“Damian, the son of Barrabus, was a warrior with eyes of silver touched by the
sky.” Dante smiled, a humorless gesture, as I looked at his eyes, noted their
color. “He slew Mona Lyra, killed the last Warrior Queen, and was cursed for
it, he and his descendants. By the sword they would live and die. Damned, in
an endless cycle of life and death, never ending. Reborn each time into an
ever diminishing line of those who carried his blood. His curse was to see his
line die slowly out, killing his heart as surely as he had cut down theirs.
Lacedaemon was one of his descendants.” The line from which Dante and his
family descended. The line that had been cursed.
I pushed passed Aquila and Tomas, and if my hands shook and my heart beat
rapidly, it did not show in my steady voice. “You speak of legends, Dante. Of
people that may or may not have existed. It’s just a story. It has nothing to
do with us.”
“You are wrong,” Dante said, speaking as softly and gently as the breeze that
blew across our skin. “I remember killing you.”

ELEVEN

WITH DANTE’S WORDS, over a hundred swords were suddenly raised up against him.
The promise of violence hummed in the air and was reflected in Dante’s
silver-blue eyes. All it would take to ignite it would be for him to lift his
blade, the sword that was currently gripped loosely in his hand, the sharp tip
resting on the ground.
Something flickered in his eyes, and I knew he was going to do it.
There was power in the ground where we stood. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of
times before a Queen had called down the moon’s light here, and her people had

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Basked in the glowing rays. It was a sacred circle of light, of power. Of
blood spilled on the ground in practice. Of challenges called and met here.
I’d stood here once, and called down those lunar rays. Drawn down those
butterflies of renewing light. And that once had made this place mine. It
recognized me, accepted me, embraced me. This place, this clearing, was mine
even more than the house where we slept and ate. This was my place of power.
I called upon it now, drew upon it deliberately, and the land answered me,
wrapped me up in invisible strands of past and present power. All the
authority that was mine, given to me, claimed by me, filled my voice as it
rang out sharply in the suddenly still night. “Hold! Stand down, everyone.”
There were times when I felt like I was stumbling around in the dark. As if I
had tripped and fallen, and a crown had accidentally tumbled down on top of my
head. Oftentimes, I felt as if I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, that I
was not worthy. But all that confusion, indecisiveness, and inadequacy fell
away. Here and now, in this moment, with the power and authority of this
sacred ground thrumming through me, I was Queen as I had never been before.
And I knew what was in my men’s heart. Every single one of them, even Dante’s.
Especially his.
“Dante.” I held his gaze. Let him see the understanding in my eyes. “It’s not
going to work. I’m not going to kill you. Drop the sword.”
A flicker in his eyes—surprise, wariness—as I began to walk toward him. He
stood alone. All others had fallen back, encircling us.
“It would be foolish of me to drop my only weapon,” Dante said, his tone easy,
reasonable. I was not fooled by it.
“And you are not a foolish man,” I said as I shortened the distance between
us. “So why would you reveal yourself like that here in my circle of power,
surrounded by over a hundred of my men, all armed? Bad odds, even for you.”
“I was discovered, not revealed.”
“You revealed yourself deliberately,” I corrected. “Why would you do that
unless you wanted me to strike you down through my men.”
I turned to fasten my gaze upon my guards, each and every one of them. “No one
here is to lift a hand against Dante or his family, or you will be foresworn
by me and cast out of my court. That is my command as your Queen.”
As I drew uncomfortably closer to Dante, Dontaine dared speak. “Mona Lisa. My
Queen, please—”
“He will not hurt me.”
“How can you say that and believe it?” Dante said, his calm façade dropping
away. “I killed you before.”
“If you wanted to hurt me, you could have done so before now. You had ample
opportunity.” He hadn’t known me at first, when he had been stricken by the
light-craving madness. Only when I had healed him and he had sought me out
afterward. When I had lifted my hands up to him in an unconscious gesture to
keep him away. He’d seen my moles then.
I stopped before him, unarmed. Sure of him, sure of myself. “If you wish to
hurt me, you can do so now and none of my men will stop you.”
He did nothing. A most telling inaction.
“Dante.” My hand reached out slowly to rest upon his hand, the one gripping
his sword. “I know what is in your heart. I will not give the order for your
death as you intend.”
His hand spasmed beneath my light touch. “You should if you are merciful. It
might end the curse. Satisfy it. My life for yours.”
“Or begin it anew. Please, Dante.”
His fingers opened and his sword fell to the ground.
I raised my voice to the others. “Sheathe your swords, men.”
They did as I commanded.
I pulled Dante away from the temptation of his dropped weapon, and he came
docilely along, looking confused, baffled. I drew him to his father, who
watched us with shattered eyes.
“Milady,” Nolan said, dropping to his knees, his head bent to the ground.
“Thank you for your mercy. I had not realized. My family and I will leave here

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immediately.”
“There is no need to go,” I told Nolan. “And every need to stay.”
“For what possible reason would you want my family and I to stay here with
you?” Dante asked. His hand was still clasped in mine, and he gazed down at
our joined hands with almost a bewildered blankness.
“For the reason fate crossed our paths once more,” I said. “For a second
chance. This time as friends instead of foes.”
Dante dragged his eyes back up to mine. In a low, deep voice, he asked, “Do
you remember me?”
“Not clearly, but some part of me does. Enough to be afraid of you,” I said
honestly.
“Not as much as you should,” Dante said. But he left his hand in mine.
“We were enemies once, long ago,” I said. “And could have been again. First,
when your father and brother snatched me. Then just now, when you made our
past known.” And what a past it was. One that had taken place over four
million years ago, in another world. But I could not doubt it, not when my
soul recognized his.
“We’re different people now,” I told him. “We’ve made different choices. If
there is a way to end your curse, I believe that this is the way—to live a
different life and not repeat the same mistakes of our past.”
“You have no memories of before, do you?” Dante asked.
“No. Do you?”
“Some. Flashes of it. You may feel differently when you remember.”
“Then I’d rather not” was my reply. “Remember it, that is. Whatever was then,
now is a new time, a new life.” I looked at Nolan. “What I offered you before
still stands. You and Hannah are welcome to stay here. Your sons also, until
they go to seek service with another Queen. My sponsorship still holds,
nothing on that has changed. If in the next week you and Hannah decide to seek
another position elsewhere, you may do so at the next Service Fair with my
full blessing. All I ask is that you stay here for a little while. Give us a
try until then.”
Nolan glanced at Dante, and some silent communication passed between father
and son.
Nolan nodded. “We’ll stay, milady.”
I felt both relieved and nervous at his agreement. Just a handful of days, I
thought, after which time husband and wife would hopefully stay, and the two
sons depart. What could happen in that short span of time?

TWELVE

I HAD MY first dream of that long-ago time when I lay down to sleep that day.
We were in the midst of battle. So much blood, I thought. And even worse than
what coated my hands…so many lives I’d taken. Mostly innocent in the fact that
they were merely following orders, their Queen’s. And therein lay the most
guilt—with the ones who had decided this war, been eager for it. Blood had
been spilled, but not theirs. Not yet. Their blood, now…I would not feel so
guilty about theirs. Only then would this madness stop. And only then would
the healing begin. But the healer part of me wondered if the lives I saved
before and after would ever balance out the blood-drenched scales of now.
A cry drew my attention, a voice that I knew. I cut down the one I was
battling and turned, bloody blade in hand, to see Shel, one of my last few
remaining strong warriors, run through by a sword. A heart wound, I saw, as
the blade was pulled from him and he toppled to the ground almost gently.
Incapacitating, but not fatal. Not yet.
As the one who had bested my warrior lifted his sword for the killing blow,
the beheading one, I lifted my hand and threw a punch of power from where I
stood, making him stagger back away from Shel.
He turned and looked at me, and I recognized him through the feel of his

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powerful presence and from his red-brown warrior bracelets that gleamed darkly
against his wrists. Barrabus. Mona Ella’s warlord general himself. A warrior
of great renown who had killed two dear to me in the last battle—Ewart and
Trey, my strongest fighters. It was odd seeing his features in this dream, and
recognizing the same likeness in his son, Dante, whom I’d come to know
intimately in another lifetime.
“Here, Barrabus. To me!” I called.
With a fierce smile, he plowed his way toward me, sending those who tried to
stop him hurtling away. Our blades met and I fought him as he deserved. With
sword, with skill. With brute strength. He was a fearsome fighter, a most
gifted swordsman who moved with swift, cutting grace.
“Draw your dagger,” I commanded as the sword blades caught and held for a
moment, interlocked. I tangled my foot behind him and shoved. He rolled
backward, surprised at my strength, and sprang to his feet with the dagger I’d
asked him to draw clutched in hand. He waited there, poised, ready.
“You do not draw yours,” he said.
I held up my left hand. The Goddess Tear in the center of my palm pulsed and
thrummed with power. “I have something much deadlier than a dagger. But that
you ask and wait for me to draw my weapon speaks of the warrior you are. An
honorable one. You are on the wrong side, Barrabus, serving a Queen who has no
honor.”
Something passed in his eyes. Silent acknowledgment of what I said. “She is my
Queen.”
“Because you gave me a chance, I will give you one in return. I ask you to
join me. Serve me instead.”
“I have sworn my oath to Mona Ella. I cannot switch allegiance here on this
field of battle.” Regret filled his dark blue eyes and was reflected in my
own, I knew, because in another time, a peaceful one, we would have likely
been friends.
“Then do not hold yourself back because you do not think me as equally armed
as yourself. Because I will not hold myself back.”
“As you say, milady.”
Our swords clashed together again, and his dagger came at me. With a thought,
a pulse of power, I blocked it, stopping his knife with my invisible energy
shield emitting from my pearly mole. We held there for a moment, at an
impasse. Then with a grunt, using his greater height and weight, he pushed
against me. Feeling myself start to slowly give beneath his denser, heavier
mass, I spun to the side. His sword struck me a glancing blow as he went
sailing past me, slicing open my left arm. I lunged after him, my own blade
stabbing forward in turn. In an unexpected maneuver, one I’d heard about but
had never seen, he turned and deflected my thrusting sword with his wrist
bracelet, using it as I had used the pulsing power in my left hand—as a
shield. Then he used it as an offensive weapon, striking a side blow with the
hard metal into my right side, knocking the breath from me. Caught unawares,
with my shielding hand down, his dagger plunged into my chest and pierced my
heart.
What I did next was without thought, just instinct. The sword dropped from my
hand and I lifted my palm against his chest. I had a moment to feel his heart
beat once, a thud of life. Then my Goddess Tear flared. Obliterating power
shot from my hand and took out his heart in an aching, throbbing burst of
heat. A moment to feel pain even sharper than that caused by his plunging
knife—a healer’s pain when she turned the use of her gift to take lives
instead of saving them—and Barrabus was gone in a flash of light. A puff of
ashes.
I woke up gasping, my hands clutching my chest where the knife had stabbed me.
I felt a presence besides me and rolled away with a startled cry.
“Mona Lisa, it’s just a dream.” It was Dontaine, I realized, looking into his
handsome, worried face. Dontaine. Not Barrabus. I glanced down at myself and
lifted my hands away from my chest, expecting to see blood. No liquid redness,
though, gushed out, and the flesh beneath was unmarred, uncut. But my palms,

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my Goddess’s Tears…I looked down at them with horror and felt them throb in
aching remembrance.
My eyes shot to Dontaine’s bare chest, searched it frantically, a visual
inspection only. I dared not touch him. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
“I’m fine. You were just dreaming,” he said. Drawing me into his arms, he held
me close. His heart beat reassuringly beneath my ear.
“Oh God, Dontaine. I remembered…”
“What?”
“I remember killing Barrabus.”
The fierce son of Barrarus slew our heart, our hope, our Warrior Queen.
I’d killed Barrabus, Dante’s ancestral father, in a past that suddenly seemed
not so distant. A past that felt as if it had only just happened.
Dontaine drew back to look at me, his eyes shuttered. “You were saying his
name.”
“Whose?”
“Barrabus’s.”
“I took out his heart with my Goddess’s Tears,” I said and hugged myself, more
to keep my dangerous hands away from Dontaine than because of the sudden cold
filling me.
“So it’s true. Those stories of Barrabus, of Mona Lyra. You are her,
returned,” Dontaine said softly.
“I don’t know. It’s the first time I’ve ever dreamed”—or more accurately,
remembered—“something from that time.”
“So Dante truly is this Damian. Cursed for killing you long ago.”
“I don’t know.” A shiver ran through my body. “I just know that I recognize
him somehow, that we’ve met before.” Not in this lifetime, but another. A
concept I had a hard time wrapping my mind around, even though my heart
believed it to be true.
The woman in my dreams had felt older, harder, her soul much darker than mine.
So heart sore and body weary. Was that me? Was I her? Or were we different
people now? Different people capable of making different choices? In another
time, a peaceful one, we would have likely been friends, had been my thought
of Barrabus. Might it be true now for his descendant, for Dante? Or were we
destined to be enemies once more?
So many chances we’d already had of being that again—enemies. But I had saved
Dante, brought him back from the brink of madness. He’d drunk down my
life-giving light and had spilled his seed into me in turn.
We had not been lovers before, that I instinctively knew. Already so much was
different from the past now. We’d shared our bodies generously with each other
before we’d known who we were, who we had been. I remember his gaze falling on
my palms as I’d held up my hands to ward him off after I had fled outside
after making love, fleeing from what I’d done and had allowed him to do. I
remembered the stunned look in his eyes, his distracted manner. That odd way
he had looked at me when I had asked him: Do I know you? He’d known who I was,
had had a chance to kill me then, to harm me again, but he hadn’t. In turn, I
had held back my men’s swords, stopped them from killing him and his family.
Blood, once shed, was a hard stain to ever wash clean again. I’d learned that
long, long ago.
God, I’d killed his father! And his father had killed those who had meant much
to me, would have killed Shel had I not intervened. Innocent lives lost on
both sides, caught up in a war not of their making. We had a second chance
now. A fragile peace.
No more bloodshed, I prayed. Please. No more of that senseless wasting of
lives.
Dontaine murmured my name, drawing me away from my thoughts. “Mona Lisa.
You’re shivering. Come here, let me hold you.” The same thing he’d said to me
when he’d asked to share my bed and I had hesitated, too upset, too distracted
to want sex. Let me hold you. I just want to give you comfort…and to receive
it, he’d said with an open and vulnerable smile on his first day here in this
house as resident, not guest. I’d let him join me in bed, fallen asleep held

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by him, and had awoken with my Goddess’s Tears throbbing after dreaming of
using them in a most horrible manner.
I looked at them now, those pearly moles. I glanced from them to Dontaine’s
beautiful unmarred chest, remembered the throbbing power that had ached in my
hands when I had awoken, the energy I had felt there waiting to be
released…and felt a wave of nausea rise up in me.
“I’m sorry, Dontaine, could you go back to your room? I need to be alone right
now.” So I don’t accidentally hurt you. Or kill you. And because my thoughts
were on another man, on Dante. Not on the man beside me in bed.
Guilt churned with worry and a fresh dose of horror upon this newest
revelation…what those innocent-looking moles in my hands were capable of.
Death. Destruction.
Dontaine slid out of the bed and picked up his clothes, not bothering to put
them on. “If you need me, you know where I am,” he said with a smile that was
gesture only. A thin shield to cover the hurt I had inflicted by asking him to
leave. Of all my lovers, he was the one I rejected the most.
Another apology formed on my lips. But what could you say, over and over
again, besides sorry? Perhaps a suggestion to look for love elsewhere?
“Dontaine…”
“Hush,” he said, stopping the words from being said. “Try to go back to
sleep.” With that quiet urging, he left.
Sleep, however, was the last thing I wanted to do now. As I’d told Dante
before, I’d really rather not remember. So instead of risking another dream,
another memory, I lay there in that big bed staring up at the ceiling, trapped
by Dontaine’s knowing presence next door. If I got up and slipped out of the
house, he would know and follow me, and I did not want to see him, talk to him
so soon while I still felt so raw. I might have been better protected, but my
freedom was curtailed, and it felt stifling.
So I lay there, still and alone, and despite myself, played and replayed that
little snippet of memory endlessly. Truth or mere dream, a fabrication of my
mind? Only one person could tell me. And with that thought, my mind circled
back to Dante.
I had believed myself unarmed when I had walked up to him. No sword, my dagger
sheathed. But in Dante’s eyes, I had been armed in the deadliest of manners.
And he’d let me touch him.
Who are you? Who am I? And why have we come together again?
Last time we had, it had ended with my death. And as I had just discovered, I
did not want to die yet. So soon, so young, with no afterlife ahead of
me…triggering another thought. Was I really young, merely twenty-one years
old? Or did my previous life, and the long stretch in between, make me an
ancient hag? And regarding that long stretch of time in between, had I lived
other lives before and not remembered them?
I gazed down at my moles as if they could provide me with an answer. And in
their fashion, they did. The Goddess’s Tears and their incumbent gifts had not
been seen since the time of the Great Exodus when the Monère had fled their
dying planet. So, no. Chances were that I hadn’t lived other unremembered
lives in between. Just before…and now.
Dante. His name was a soft whisper in my mind. I have a lot of questions to
ask you. I wondered briefly if he would answer them. If he could? Or would it
be better if he did not?
You may feel differently when you remember.
My flesh prickled with goose bumps and I shivered again.
For the next several long hours, as sunset inched slowly closer, the most
tantalizing, morbid question of all teased my mind.
How did you kill me? How did I die?

THIRTEEN

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AS DAYLIGHT EBBED, the house finally stirred and I was freed from the prison
of my room. Thaddeus hadn’t returned yet; the space where he normally parked
his car was still empty. I wanted to talk to him, tell him what I’d learned.
Perhaps comfort myself with his presence. He was not aware yet of the
revelations of the night before because he ran on a different time schedule
than the rest of us did. The normal human cycle: sleeping at night, going to
school during the day.
After school, in deference to our flip-flopped habits, Thaddeus usually
studied at the library, doing his homework there so as not to disturb the rest
of the sleeping household. And probably not wanting to be inhibited by us
either, restricted by the need to be quiet. He returned to the house when the
brilliant hues of sunset began to paint the sky.
Chami, Thaddeus’s unofficial guardian, hadn’t liked the idea at all. If it
were up to him and the other men, Thaddeus and I would have been guarded at
all times, Thaddeus because he was the men’s hope for a different future. My
brother was the only male who could call down the moon’s light, who could
Bask, something before now only Queens could do. They had wanted to put a
guard around him 24/7. Both Thaddeus and I had balked at the idea. Thaddeus
had argued that instead of protecting him, it would point him out as a target.
His greatest safety lay in secrecy, in letting no others know of his gift. In
treating him like a normal Mixed Blood. And trust me, they were not guarded
around the clock. Far from it.
I’d backed Thaddeus because I had promised to try to give my brother as normal
a life as possible…and because had I allowed the men this twenty-four-hour
watch, the next person they would have imposed it on would have been me. Same
blood that we were, we both were used to our freedom, and did not wish it
restricted so.
Chami had finally relented, agreeing that Thaddeus would probably be safer
among humans. In general, humans were much more peaceful and civilized than
Monères were. In general, though, as I found out, did not take into account
the high school teenage subspecies homo sapien idiotae. Schoolyard bullies.
Thaddeus made himself scarce that evening after returning home. And I saw why
in multihued blue-and-purple glory when he slid quietly into his chair at
dinner that night. He was sporting not only a black eye, but a bloody nose—one
that had stopped bleeding not too long ago. The faint iron-rich scent of fresh
blood clinging to him was unmistakable.
“Thaddeus, what in Hellfire happened to you?” Chami demanded, beating me to
the question by a nanosecond.
I repeated the question. My version of it. “Yeah, what the fuck happened to
you?”
I’d invited the Morells to join us for dinner, with thoughts of having them
get to know us better. All thoughts of polite table talk, however, went flying
out the window as I gazed at the livid bruises that swelled up Thaddeus’s left
eye and puffed up his nose like a bumpy balloon.
Thaddeus sighed.
What had he hoped, I wondered? That we would just ignore the black-and-blues
and pretend that someone hadn’t used his face as a punching bag?
“I got into a fight after school.”
That much was obvious. We waited, but nothing more was forthcoming. I was
sorry about focusing everyone’s attention on him, but the fury, the trembling
outrage that rose up in me demanded answers now! Not later.
“With who?” I asked in as calm a voice as I could manage, which was not very
calm at all.
“With three other guys from school,” Thaddeus muttered into his plate.
“Three other seniors?”
He nodded. His eyes were cast down so he didn’t see the heat flash through my
eyes. Three seniors! Eighteen-year-old boys who were probably taller than I,
and way bigger than Thaddeus. He’d basically skipped a grade, and was not only
a year younger than the other seniors in his class—he’d only turned seventeen
a couple of weeks ago—but he was much smaller in size and of slighter build,

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making him look years younger than his age. His predominant Monère blood made
him mature more slowly, so that while all his classmates had already hit
puberty, cruised long past it, he was only just starting to enter it. Only
just beginning to hit that fast spurt in physical growth and supernatural
strength. He had almost a Full Blood’s strength, but he’d suppressed that part
of him through denial.
Thaddeus had grown up thinking himself human. When his sharper senses and
supernatural strength had started to emerge, he’d thought he was going crazy.
He’d imposed an unconscious blanket of control over that part of himself, so
that his greater Monère strength flared only when that control cracked,
usually during times of anxiety and stress. Still…being ganged up on by three
boys much bigger than you…that had to count as one of those times of stress.
“Tell me that they look worse than you do,” I said. “Make me feel better about
this.”
My little brother shook his head.
“Why didn’t you wipe the floor with them, Thaddeus? You could have if you’d
wanted to.”
His answer surprised me, and made me close my eyes and grind my teeth.
“This sudden spurting strength is so new, Lisa.” He was the only one who
called me by just my human name. “I was afraid of hurting them if I fought
back.”
If I fought back. Meaning that he hadn’t. He’d just stood there, or lay curled
up on the ground, letting them beat on him without fighting back. Shit.
“I was worried that…I don’t know…that I might even kill them without meaning
to,” he mumbled. “I didn’t start it.”
“I know that, Thaddeus.” He didn’t have to tell me that; I knew my brother.
Even in the short time we’d known each other, I knew he was not the kind of
kid to go around looking for trouble.
“Why were they picking on you?” I asked.
“Why else? I’m smarter than they are and much smaller.” It obviously bothered
him, his short stature and skinny build. “I’m helping a girl out in calculus
who’s failing the class. Her jock boyfriend didn’t like the time we were
spending together. He and his football buddies decided to let me know just how
unhappy they were today after school.”
A girl, I thought, gritting my teeth. Of course it had to involve a girl. A
jock boyfriend usually implied a pretty cheerleader-type girlfriend. A popular
blond ditz who, if she stayed true to stereotype, was stupid enough to fail
calculus but smart enough to latch onto some brainy guy and use him to help
her pass the course. And who better than the new kid, someone desperate to fit
in, make some friends? I wondered if Thaddeus had a crush on this girl. I
wondered if maybe it wasn’t just the Neanderthal boyfriend and his two buddies
I should beat up but the girlfriend as well—the real instigator of this mess.
I took a deep breath, determined to act responsibly, both as Queen and as
older sister. I would not give in to my primitive urges, which were screaming
for vengeance.
“I’ll talk to your principal, Mr. Camden,” I said, not knowing what else to
do.
“No!” Thaddeus said with horror. “If you do, you’ll make it impossible for me
at school.”
“He’s right, my lady,” Quentin said, speaking up from where he sat with his
family down at the other end of the long table. Speaking to Thaddeus he said,
“Dante and I just went through what you’re going through now. High school can
really suck if you have some guys gunning for you. My brother and I taught at
my dad’s self-defense school. We’d be happy to work with you. Get you used to
your new strength, show you how to defend yourself. Make you more comfortable
with how much strength to safely use against human opponents.”
“You two went to high school?” Thaddeus asked. “During the daytime?”
It surprised me, also.
“Sure, most of the time in school is spent indoors. We only went out during
gym, only a forty-minute period. A few guys used to pick on me because of my

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looks. Called me a girly girl, said I was gay, things like that.”
“What did you do?” Thaddeus asked.
“I ignored them, but they kept bothering me until one day I fought back and
knocked them on their asses. They left me alone after that.”
And therein lay the answer to Thaddeus’s dilemma. He had to stand up for
himself. If someone else did it for him, it would only make him look weak, and
the bullies would continue to pick on him.
Thaddeus looked to me with eager excitement. He obviously wanted to accept the
help Quentin was offering, help given by someone who knew exactly what he was
going through. It had been my original plan to enroll Thaddeus in Nolan’s
self-defense school—a school that might never be now.
My own safety I might be willing to risk. But the real question was: Did I
trust Dante near my brother? Because the help Quentin had offered had included
Dante. We’d be happy to work with you.
“That’s generous of you, Quentin. Thaddeus, would you like to train with them
during this next week while they’re here?” Anything longer than that was not
guaranteed. Come the next Council powwow, the twin Morell boys were likely
flying this coop.
My brother nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, that sounds great.”
“Then I would be very grateful for your help,” I said to Quentin, accepting
the offer.
Quentin smiled at Thaddeus and me. Dante did not. His pale, hooded eyes
gleamed at me. Opaque, inscrutable.
“Great,” Quentin said. “We can begin tonight.”

FOURTEEN

THEY DID INDEED begin that very night, right after supper. Not in the
clearing, which was deep in the woods, but on the lawn behind the house.
Another smooth move on pretty boy Quentin’s part—choosing a spot where it
would be easy for everyone to keep a discreet and not so discreet eye on them.
Aquila and Tomas chose to do their watching from the kitchen window, which
overlooked the back lawn, while Nolan and Hannah more tactfully sipped tea in
the parlor, affording them a nice side view of things.
I was much more blatant about it. Come on, now. This was my baby brother. And
not just him but Jamie, who had volunteered his help as the human Thaddeus
could practice on. With Jamie’s Mixed Blood strength, he was essentially just
that—only human strong. His sister, Tersa, had silently come outside with the
rest of us to watch. The rest of us being Chami and me. Chami was ostensibly
acting as my guard. His true charge, though, was Thaddeus.
Dontaine had gone out with his men to attend to their regular duties, though
he had wanted to stay. I had seen it in his eyes, in the tightening of his
jaw. But with Chami, Tomas, and Aquila watching over me, he’d had no reason to
linger.
Quentin was a good teacher, keeping things low key and casual. He demonstrated
the move first with his brother, Dante, who acted in the role of aggressor. A
simple maneuver of blocking Dante’s slow punch, grabbing his wrist, and
sweeping him over a fast, tripping foot, using his opponent’s own momentum to
send him flying. Quentin and Dante went through the moves in slow motion two
more times, calling out the steps—punch, block, grab, sweep, and trip. Like a
dance.
Then Quentin had Thaddeus practice it on him.
“You don’t have to worry if your strength flares up with me,” Quentin told my
brother. “Try to keep it at human level, though. I’ll let you know if you
start using too much force.”
He put Thaddeus through the steps three more times until he was more
comfortable with it, keeping the moves slow and deliberate.
“You learn the steps first,” Quentin said, “then you worry about speed and

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strength.” Though he did work on the latter. He didn’t automatically just go
flying past Thaddeus when my brother pulled on his wrist. He made him exert
enough strength to accomplish the maneuver on his own.
“Yes, like that,” Quentin praised, and Thaddeus’s face lit up with a wide
smile. “You won’t need to use any more strength than that when someone’s
really trying to hit you, putting the full force of their momentum behind
their punch.”
After Thaddeus performed the steps consistently two more times, he paired him
up with Jamie.
“Keep it nice and slow,” Quentin said, watching them both closely. “That’s it.
Perfect.” And it was. Jamie swung at my brother, moving in slow motion.
Thaddeus blocked and grabbed, and tripped him.
“I didn’t hurt you, Jamie, did I?” Thaddeus asked anxiously.
“Nah, you kidding? You could grab my wrist even tighter if you wanted to. The
pull was good, though. I went sailing right by you.”
And so it went. Then it was Jamie’s turn.
The two boys joked with each other, their eyes lit up with excitement, eager
to learn. They were clearly having a blast. The rest of us were much more
relaxed, seeing how well Quentin had matters in control. He used Dante only in
the initial demonstration; he had no actual contact with Thaddeus and Jamie.
The slow, step-by-step instruction paid off when they moved on to the next
phase.
“Now we’re going to practice it faster,” Quentin said to the boys’ cheers.
He illustrated the move at a more realistic speed with Dante. They were
beautiful together, all effortless strength and lithe grace, executing the
moves in perfect choreography. Two healthy young animals. One fair, the other
dark. Both natural superior warriors by blood and birthright.
“And when you are comfortable with that, even faster, like this.” Quentin
caught his brother’s punch with an easy block, a punch that came at him so
swiftly it was just a fast blur. The next two movements flowed naturally—sweep
and trip—and Dante went sailing past Quentin. He hit the ground in a smooth,
tight roll and sprang to his feet.
“Hopefully the guy you take down will just hit the ground hard and lie there
instead of doing what Dante just did,” Quentin said, grinning.
“Oh, man! Can you teach us how to do that next, the roll Dante just did?”
Jamie asked, eyes shining.
“Sure.” Quentin smiled. He seemed to be enjoying himself as much as the boys.
“That’s the next thing on the plate, how to fall correctly.”
Tersa stood quietly by my side throughout all this. Nothing to give away her
thoughts while she was out here, watching. Just her actions themselves—that
she was here.
“Tersa, would you like to learn this stuff also?” I asked her quietly.
A hard, uncertain silence met me, an answer in itself. Yes, she wanted to
learn, but was wary about the physical contact required. She had an
instinctive fear of men now. Most girls would after they had been violated by
a man.
“You could practice the moves on me,” I offered.
All hesitance disappeared. “I would like that. Thank you, milady.”
She followed behind me shyly as I took her hand and stepped out toward the
others.
“We’ve decided to join you,” I said.
Quentin smiled in welcome. It was Dante who unexpectedly protested. “Tersa is
welcome. But I would ask that you just watch, milady.”
“Why?” I asked, ready to argue with Dante, thinking that he didn’t want Chami
and the others to worry about my close proximity to him. I was wrong. That
wasn’t the reason at all.
His pale blue eyes moved down to my midsection then back up, a tiny eye
flicker indiscernible to the others. But its impact on me was as if a giant
hand had reached out and smacked me. Made me remember: Oh yeah, I could be
pregnant.

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I might have even swayed, because his hand started to lift before he checked
the movement. I stepped back abruptly, knowing my face was utterly pale. He’d
almost touched me…a near disaster. It would have sent my men spilling out of
the house. I almost laughed out loud at the thought: my men rushing to me,
concerned about my safety, while Dante was worried about the very same
thing—keeping me safe…because I might be carrying his child.
“Tersa,” I said when my voice was steady enough to speak. “Will you be okay
practicing with your brother?”
She nodded. Glanced at Dante, back at me. “Thaddeus, too. I feel comfortable
with him.”
I made my lips stretch out in a smile. “Good. It’s probably better if I just
watch you guys then.”
My mind and heart were in a tumult as I walked back to Chami. With everything
that had happened, I’d forgotten that Dante and I may have created life. A
tenuous possibility, but one that still guided Dante’s action. Not just
tonight, I suddenly realized, but also that of the two previous days:
yesterday when he had revealed himself, trying that suicide stunt; and the
first day, after we made love, when he’d seen my Goddess’s Tears and known who
I was. Was that the reason he had not killed me then? Because of that one in a
million chance I was pregnant by him?
Oh, Dante, I thought. What happens when my period comes as it undoubtedly will
in a few weeks and we all know my womb is empty? Will you try to kill me then
when that possibility of a child no longer holds back your hand?
As if sensing my thoughts, Dante glanced at me. Our eyes met across the
distance separating us. But I didn’t know what was in his mind. What he
thought, what he felt.
An explosion of movement from the forest’s edge caught my attention. Movement
so fast I didn’t know what I was seeing for a split second. I felt another
Monère’s presence but didn’t register whose it was. Only Tersa’s happy
exclamation of “Wiley!” clued me in. The wild Mixed Blood barreled straight
toward her, and she had no fear, just a welcoming smile.
I had only a moment to shout, “Don’t hurt him,” when he hit them. Or more
specifically, hit Quentin. Wiley took Quentin down in a smashing tumble of
grappling limbs and vicious snarls. The sharp scent of spilled blood suddenly
permeated the air—a smell that filled me with fear, especially when I saw
Dante’s face.
I’d never seen him look the way he did now. Even when he had been gripped by
the madness of Lunara asseros, he wasn’t near as frightening. His eyes—those
odd pale eyes—glowed with the heat of his rage…a murderous one. He reached for
Wiley’s head, not to pull him off his brother, to stop the fight, but with the
clear intent of killing him. To snap his neck.
I cried, “No, Dante!” He hesitated, giving me enough time to reach the tangled
fighters. To grab a hold of Wiley and shout, “Stop, Wiley, stop!” as I dragged
him off of Quentin, kicking and snarling. Then Tersa was there, and with her
first word—his name—and her touch, Wiley grew calm. He allowed himself to be
pulled away, and submitted to Tersa’s frantic patting search after pushing
aside his bloody shirt.
“It’s not his blood,” Tersa said, looking up at me.
“No,” Dante said, wrath vibrating his words. “It’s my brother’s blood.”
I turned and saw that Quentin’s neck had been cut open. Dante’s hand was
clamped tightly over the wound, but blood still seeped out from beneath his
fingers.
“How did Wiley do that?” I asked.
“With the knife Quentin took away from him,” Dante snarled, his eyes flashing
with such fury, I took a step back from him. “The knife my brother had in his
hands but did not use against his attacker because you said not to hurt him.
That is why Quentin is injured and why Wiley is not dead by his hand.”
Those eyes and the searing emotions contained within them were too intense for
me. My gaze dropped from his, and I turned to find my chameleon suddenly there
between Dante and I. “Chami, get the healer. Quickly, please.”

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“No need,” Dante said, forestalling him. “She comes.”
Hannah rushed to Quentin’s side with Nolan beside her. The same heated emotion
that gripped Dante seemed to grip Nolan also. The big warrior’s eyes flashed
with rage over his son’s injury, making him a sudden fearsome threat.
Something the rest of my men, who were pouring out of the house, obviously
sensed as well.
Aquila and Tomas came up beside Chami, forming a solid barrier of flesh
between me and the Morells, including Wiley and Tersa behind our protective
wall. At the sight and scent of Nolan, Wiley began snarling again, reluctantly
stopping only when Tersa hushed him. There was a tense, brittle silence with
just the sound of harsh breathing. Then I felt the gentle thrum of Hannah’s
power as she poured her energy into Quentin’s wound.
When his neck was healed, Quentin coughed, cleared his throat. “It’s all
right,” he said. “Not the boy’s fault. Father and I trapped him, tied him up,
and used him to lure Mona Lisa out of the house.”
It took me a second to realize that Quentin was explaining things to his
brother. That he was soothing Dante, whom he had accurately pegged as the most
volatile threat.
“He was watching us last night,” Quentin said, his eyes on Dante. “Thought he
was getting used to us, that he was coming to accept our presence, but
something set him off just now.”
“Me,” Tersa said. “I didn’t know Wiley was here watching us. I got too close
to Quentin, and Wiley rushed to protect me from what he saw as a threat.”
“He wasn’t just protecting you,” Dante corrected coldly. “He was trying to
kill my brother.”
“He doesn’t know better,” I said, pushing through my wall of men until I could
see Dante. “Wiley grew up wild. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t understand what
we’re saying. He only knew that your brother and your father had hurt him
once, and that Tersa, the only person he loves and trusts in this world, was
suddenly within Quentin’s reach.”
I walked to Quentin, to where he sat on the ground flanked by his father and
mother, with Dante standing like a burning flame of retribution in front of
them, protecting his family. I crossed that invisible line that had suddenly
sprang up between us and the Morells, walked past Dante, and knelt in front of
Quentin. I took his hand and felt the strength, the calluses already formed
there.
“Thank you, Quentin, for not hurting Wiley. I’m sorry you were hurt because
you held yourself back, but thank you for doing so.”
“No need to thank me.” Quentin glanced up at his brother. “I wouldn’t have
wanted to hurt the kid anyway, Dante. Even if Mona Lisa hadn’t said anything.
Can’t blame the kid for being angry at what Dad and I did to him. We were the
bad guys here. The boy was trying to protect Tersa from what he saw as a
threat to her.” His eyes asked his brother to let it go. He did.
By small degrees, the brittle tension left Dante. The hot burning rage faded,
leaving behind a chilling frost in its place. Trust me on this, it was a
definite improvement.
“That was a stupid thing you did, little brother,” Dante said, extending his
hand down to Quentin, “allowing him to hurt you like that.”
“Hey, you’re only older by six lousy minutes,” Quentin protested. Taking
Dante’s hand, he let him pull him up. We were all linked briefly for a
moment—brother with brother, my hand still holding Quentin’s. Then our hands
unclasped, and the three-way connection broke apart.
“My apologies,” I said formally.
“No apologies needed, milady,” Nolan said in his deep voice. “No one is at
fault. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say everyone is at fault, therefore
no one person is to blame. Bring Wiley here,” he instructed Tersa. “He needs
to accept us.”
Agreeing with the wisdom of that, Tersa tugged Wiley forward. Wiley bared his
yellow teeth at his former captors, but he didn’t try to break free of Tersa’s
hold as he could so easily have done. Wiley’s three-quarters Monère heritage

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gave him almost full Monère strength. He was much stronger than Tersa, who was
only half Monère.
“Step to the side, please, my Queen.” It was a bit jarring for me to hear
those words—my Queen—coming from Dante’s mouth.
“What?”
“Step to the side,” Dante repeated, his face set in hard, uncompromising
lines. “If the boy goes ballistic again, I do not want you standing next to
him.”
I hesitated. If Wiley went wild again, I could help restrain him. Next to
Tersa, Wiley tolerated me the most. He wouldn’t intentionally hurt me. But the
cold, implacable look in Dante’s eyes, and that slight dipping gaze down to my
waistline made me swallow back my protest and take several steps back from
them. Dante retreated as I did, and Nolan nudged Hannah behind him. Behind her
husband’s protective bulk, the healer rolled her eyes at me and smiled, a
woman wise enough to yield to her man’s natural, protective urges without
arguing. It was the type of wink given from one woman to other in the same
situation. The thought froze the answering smile that formed on my lips. Did
she see Dante as my man? Did I see him that way? And last but not least—did he
see himself that way?
I was obeying him. Had yielded to him twice already. But what other choice did
I have? All that he had asked was for me to stay safe. Until I knew if I was
pregnant or not, I felt compelled to obey his wishes in this matter.
Crap. There had to be a faster way of determining whether I was pregnant,
other than waiting three long weeks for my period.
Tersa’s voice drew me back to the present drama. She said Wiley’s name and
touched his chest. Putting a hand on Quentin’s arm—something that made the
feral Mixed Blood growl—she did the same with Quentin.
“Quentin. Friend. Quentin is my friend.” She repeated it with Nolan.
It was almost funny…if it wasn’t so darn scary…to see tiny Tersa, almost
birdlike in her delicacy and size, standing so fearlessly between the three
males, two of them much bigger than her, all of them far stronger. Fearless
was not a word one usually used to describe Tersa, someone who quivered
uncomfortably in the presence of men, but it fit her well now. Steely
determination shone in her eyes, was heard in her voice. You will all be
friends, the rigid posture of her spine shouted.
“Friend,” Quentin said with a faint smile. Moving slowly, his eyes fixed on
Wiley, he picked up the small dagger lying in the grass at his feet. “Friend,”
he repeated, and offered the blade, hilt-first, to Wiley.
I didn’t have to look at Dante to feel the sudden tension emanating off of him
in waves. I held my breath—we all did—as Wiley cautiously took the knife from
Quentin.
Tersa, wisely, immediately took the weapon from Wiley. His hand tensed briefly
on the blade, then with a faint shudder, he yielded it up to Tersa without any
further struggle.
“Say it, Wiley,” she said, gentle determination lacing her words.
“Quentin—friend.”
Amazingly enough, he did. Wiley opened his mouth and said the first words I’d
ever heard the wild boy speak. “Quentin. Friend.”
Tersa had him repeat it with Nolan. When he uttered the words, “Nolan,
friend,” she smiled at him, blindingly bright, and it was like the sun
suddenly breaking out behind dark and stormy clouds.
“Good, Wiley, good,” she murmured, and led the boy away.
“She’s beautiful when she smiles,” Quentin murmured, earning a scowl from her
brother, Jamie, who had been standing quietly next to Chami.
“And very stubborn,” Jamie said, sticking out his chin. “Comes with our red
Irish hair.”
“She’s incredibly brave,” Quentin said with admiration.
“Not anymore. Not since…” Jamie stopped. Sighed. “But she’s different when it
comes to Wiley. She’ll do anything to protect him. Don’t hurt the boy.”
“I won’t,” Quentin promised, eyes solemn.

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And like that, the little drama was over. Mine, however, was just beginning.

FIFTEEN

ALL I CAN say is thank God for Safeway. That was one of the wonderful things
about this country. That no matter where you went in the United States, even
to the littlest rinky-dink, no-name town, you could always find the basics
like a gas station, a bank, a McDonald’s. A supermarket.
It was the latter I found myself being driven to, with Aquila as my driver. I
was lucky to have only the one guard. The rest of the men had sort of turned
red when I’d baldly announced that I had to buy some feminine products at the
grocery store. Aquila had been nominated to go with me, and he was not a bad
choice. I knew I could depend on Aquila for discretion. Still, I felt bad
about the knowledge—the possibility—I was going to burden him with.
“Aquila,” I said, when we were a short distance from the town, “what you see
and what you hear tonight, you cannot tell anyone else.”
He glanced at me curiously, but nodded readily. “As you wish, milady.”
I guess that was better than saying, “As you command, my Queen.” But barely. I
still squirmed over the absolute power given to me over my men, my people. The
power that came with my mantle as Queen. I was more used to free will, and
decided to treat his answer as that. Because he’d chosen to do so.
“Thank you, Aquila. And I apologize ahead of time.”
“For what?”
“For making you highly uncomfortable.”
He smiled, and his neat beard and small mustache shifted with the movement of
his lips. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen him smile. He was one of
the oldest among my men, and the most serious. Not somber like Tomas, but more
proper, more severe in his demeanor.
“Being in your company can only be a pleasure,” he said, as relaxed as I’d
ever seen him.
“Are you happy here, Aquila?”
“Yes, milady. I am the happiest I have been in a very long time. Your guards’
betrayal turned out to be a blessing for me.”
Not long ago, Aquila had been a rogue bandit under Sandoor’s command. My lover
Gryphon had bartered himself in return for four of Mona Louisa’s guards to
protect me during the vulnerable time before I was officially acknowledged as
Queen. It had been a poor bargain, because those guards betrayed me into the
hand of outlaw rogues at the very first opportunity. Aquila had been one of
the rogues. He’d had a perfect opportunity to molest me, but had held strict
discipline over himself and the rest of the bandits.
“I never thanked you, Aquila.”
“For what, milady?”
“For your kindness before, when I was doused with the witch’s brew.” An
aphrodisiac that had set me on fire. “The other rogues with you would have
raped me had you allowed it, I saw it in their eyes. But you…all I saw in your
eyes was compassion. Not lust.”
“I do not enjoy seeing a woman abused, much less a Queen,” he said in a sad
voice. How tough it must have been for him, then, because Sandoor’s outlaw
group of rogues had used and abused a Queen for ten long years—Sandoor’s
former Queen, who everyone had thought dead. It struck me now, as it had then,
how different Aquila was from the rest of the bandits. Even dressed in rags,
he had been a gentleman.
“I have to thank you for now, as well. For managing all the business details
for me.”
“That truly has been a pleasure for me,” he answered, smiling. “And your
brother has been wonderful assistance. Young Master Thaddeus has a natural
flair for commerce.”
“A gift I don’t seem to have inherited,” I said ruefully. That part of my

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responsibility was quite daunting, actually, since I knew next to nothing
about money—vast amounts of it, anyway. Or how to manage it profitably. “Do
you have time tomorrow to go over the financial records with me? I’ve shirked
this part of my duty long enough. I need to familiarize myself better with my
holdings.”
“Of course, milady.”
“Call me Mona Lisa, please. I like that better.”
He dipped his head. “Mona Lisa, then. Do you have any time tomorrow, after
dinner?”
“All night. Though I hope it doesn’t take us that long to go over everything.”
“It might be better if we pace ourselves, spread it out over several days,” he
said seriously.
“Several days?” I squeaked. “I only expected it to take one night. Cripes. How
detailed are those records?”
Amusement shone briefly in his eyes, but his voice was his normal serious tone
when he spoke. “I was thinking that we could look over the books of a few
businesses, then go visit them. You will get a much better understanding of
each place that way.”
It was a smart suggestion. I nodded my agreement as we pulled into Safeway’s
parking lot. Pushing aside the duties of tomorrow, I concentrated on my quest
for tonight.
I found my answer not in one of the aisles as I had initially thought, but
from the pharmacist I happened to stop and seek advice from. It was one of
those stores that had a full pharmacy, open until eight o’clock at night,
according to their posted sign. Twenty minutes until closing time, I saw,
glancing at the clock, with no one in line. The pharmacist was a kindly
looking older man, a grand-fatherly type. One you found easy to approach and
ask questions of. Even difficult ones like the one I hit him with.
“Excuse me,” I said, feeling my face flame with embarrassment. “Could you tell
me which pregnancy test would be the best one to get here? One that’s good in
early detection.”
He rattled off a few brands, mentioned how early they could detect
pregnancy—“As early as eight days after conception”—and threw in something
complicated about things called Human Chorionic Gonadotropin and false
negative tests, which went completely over my head. All I retained were the
brand names he recommended.
“Which aisle?” I asked.
“Aisle eighteen.”
I thanked him and headed there. A quick glance at Aquila showed his face to be
carefully free of all expression. He considerately stayed at the end of the
empty aisle, keeping me in sight, but affording me a small measure of privacy
as I looked over the home pregnancy kits. The store carried four different
brands. The ones the pharmacist had recommended did indeed have the earliest
detection capacity. With the others tests, you needed to be further along, at
least two weeks into your pregnancy. I was already freaking out after a few
days. Forget waiting two more weeks. I snatched up two brands, paid for them,
and went immediately to the ladies’ room.
“Wait here,” I told Aquila tightly.
Yeah, I knew it was too early. Even with Amber, it would have only been four
days, not eight. There was also the fact that a human pregnancy test might not
work for a mostly Monère, only-one-quarter-human woman. But something in me
needed to know right now. I needed to do something, even if that something was
to pee on two plastic sticks and see if a blue line appeared in one, and a
smiley face on the other.
They did. One blue line and one smiley face.
Oh shit. White dots hazed my vision. I had to put my hands against the stall
walls and wait until it passed. Until I could see once more without little
white dots floating in my field of vision. I took a deep breath and looked
again, sure I had to be wrong.
A blue line was in the center window of the first plastic stick. Not faintly

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blue, but distinctly and solidly blue. A very strong positive blue. A smiling
happy face peered up at me from the other pregnancy test.
With trembling hands, I opened up both instruction booklets and read all the
tiny print, especially the parts about accuracy. I had to read them three
times. If I understood it correctly, most of the inaccuracies rested with
false negatives, meaning that the test read inaccurately as negative when you
were actually pregnant. They recommended repeating the test when you were
further along, if there was any question. False positives, on the other
hand—having the test read as positive and not being pregnant—were very rare.
I stuck the plastic testers back in their boxes, shoved them into the brown
paper bag, and left the ladies’ room. Aquila immediately came to my side and
took my arm in a supporting grip. I guess I must have looked as pale and shaky
as I felt.
“Do you wish to go home?” he asked—not if I was okay, or if I was pregnant or
not. Just whether or not I wanted to go home. For some reason, his tact and
consideration brought tears to my eyes. Me, who rarely cried. Those tears,
more than anything else, really scared me. Made me wonder. Oh my God, can I
really be pregnant?
“I need to speak to the pharmacist again,” I said.
Without another word, Aquila guided me back to the pharmacist, then wandered
over to a nearby aisle, pretending to browse the items there.
The pharmacist smiled when he saw me again. “Did you find what you needed?”
I nodded and took out the two boxes, opened them, and solemnly showed him the
results. I should have felt a little awkward presenting him with something I
had just peed on, but I was pretty much numb to all embarrassment at this
point.
“What does this mean?” I asked.
“It means you’re pregnant, ma’am.”
“But I can’t be,” I said desperately. “It’s too soon. Way too soon. Only a few
days. Four at the most.”
The pharmacist looked from me to the glaringly positive tests, then back
again. “If these tests were negative, and you just told me it had only been a
few days for you, I would tell you to repeat the tests in two weeks. But with
not just one but two positive results, how early you are doesn’t matter. It
pretty much means that you should be expecting a little one nine months from
now.”
He glanced down at my hand, took in the lack of a wedding ring. In a
compassionate, nonjudgmental tone he added, “Unless you don’t want it. If
that’s the case, then you’re early enough that you have some other options
open to you, like Plan B.”
“What’s that?” I asked, carefully putting all the incriminating contents back
in the bag.
“Pretty much what the name says. It’s an FDA-approved, emergency
contraceptive. A second chance for a woman to prevent an unplanned pregnancy.
You have to use it within five days of intercourse, though it’s most effective
if taken within the first twenty-four-hour period. And you have to be eighteen
or older. If you’re younger, you’ll need a doctor’s prescription for it.”
“I’m twenty-one.”
“Then I can offer it to you without a doctor’s script. Would you like it?”
My throat closed up. Words wouldn’t come out. I nodded instead.
Tossing away the other brown bag, I left clutching a new white one, even
guiltier in its content. It was not taking life, the pharmacist had emphasized
kindly, simply preventing it from taking hold in your womb.
I got into the car feeling numb and shell-shocked.
Aquila didn’t speak until after we had pulled out onto the freeway. “My first
thought was that you were upset because you were not pregnant.”
When I didn’t say anything, he continued softly, “A child would be celebrated
by our people, milady. You would not even have to raise it. Others would
gladly do so.”
I flinched. “Milady” once more, instead of “Mona Lisa.”

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“I cannot risk a child, Aquila.” How to explain what I could not explain.
“There’s something wrong with me. And my greatest fear is that it will affect
the…” I stopped, took a deep breath. “I just can’t.”
“Before you take the pills, you should see the healer,” Aquila said, “for your
own safety. So that she will at least know what is happening should things go
wrong.” The pharmacist had listed a bunch of things. Adverse side effects, he
had called them. Things like nausea, abdominal pain, fatigue, headache,
menstrual changes, dizziness, breast tenderness, vomiting, and diarrhea, to
list a few.
“If I’m going to be taking a life”—preventing it, the pharmacist had insisted,
but I knew what I was doing—“then it’s only right that I suffer a little
discomfort.”
“Mona Lisa.” My name once more. Bringing another round of tears to my eyes.
“You are mostly Monère. Human tests and medication may not work on you the way
they are meant to. Before you put yourself through this, and risk harming
yourself, you should ask the healer to determine if you are even with child
first.”
With child—such an old-fashioned phrase. One that made me want to weep.
“Mayhap you can even ascertain from her if this thing you believe is wrong
with you will even affect a child should you carry one.”
Putting aside all my fears, it made a lot of sense. I leaned back in the seat
with those two destructive pills sitting like a hundred-pound weight in my
lap, and nodded. “It’s a good suggestion, Aquila. I’ll talk to Hannah first.”
The relief on his face was palpable. We didn’t talk anymore. Just drove the
rest of the way home with both of us lost in ponderous thought.
The pharmacist’s words that the pills had to be taken in the first five days
and were most effective if taken early worked like a ticking clock in my
brain. Chances were, the life growing in me was seeded by Amber. But I
remembered my body’s sudden undeniable craving for Dante’s seed. Surely my
body would not hunger like that had its need already been met. If it was
Dante’s…and a part of me strongly thought that it was…then we were still in
the first two days. A better chance for the pills to work.
“Aquila, could you find Hannah for me?” I asked as we parked in front of Belle
Vista. “See if she can speak with me now.”
Seeking out Hannah proved an easy matter. Resourceful man that he was, Aquila
asked Rosemary. She promptly directed us to the infirmary, which, I learned to
my surprise, was set at the rear corner of the house. We returned outside and
made our way around to the back.
Belle Vista, when translated, meant Beautiful View. It was a huge mansion, so
big that I still had not viewed all the rooms. No surprise, then, to find
Hannah and two housemaids cleaning up a large room in a separate, detached
building almost hidden away in the back. It looked as if it had originally
been a four-car garage. Some time in the past, though, the wide garage doors
had been taken down and replaced with regular doors, and it had been converted
into an infirmary. The front half of the room was set with eight cots: four
lined up in neat order along one wall, another four along the opposite wall.
The second half of the room was separated by curtains, which were currently
drawn back, and looked to be the medicinal storage part of the infirmary, the
healer’s workroom—what Hannah was in the process of presently setting to
order.
“Milady,” Hannah said with a welcoming smile as she caught sight of me.
“Do you have a moment to speak with me?”
“Of course, Mona Lisa.” Her smile faded as she noted the tension tightening my
eyes as she washed and dried her hands. “Let’s walk outside, shall we?” she
suggested.
Aquila trailed forty feet behind us, far enough to lend us a semblance of
privacy, close enough to still guard. We didn’t speak until we reached a
burbling stream with small boulders lining its edge, and found comfortable
seats on two rocks set near each other. I opened my mouth to speak, but Hannah
drew a shushing finger to her mouth and took out a necklace that had been

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hidden beneath her dress. It looked like a very old piece of jewelry, a plain
and simple dark gray stone that hung from a gold chain. The stone was the size
of a robin’s egg, but much less pretty. She touched it with a gentle thrum of
power, and that ugly gray stone turned a startlingly beautiful orange color.
As it started to glow and resonate, I felt a light field of energy expand and
encircle us.
“What’s that?” I asked. “What did you do?”
“It’s a privacy charm,” Hannah explained. What had no doubt allowed Nolan and
Quentin to come so near the house without detection when they had snatched me.
“Now we can speak without others hearing us.”
“How did you know that I needed privacy?”
“Your face, your body’s tension. Tell me what troubles you.”
She was so kind, so motherly in her manner and expression that those stupid
tears stung my eyes once more. “I need to know if I’m pregnant. It’s only been
a few days. Can you tell this early?”
“Sometimes, not always. May I lay my hands over your belly, touch your skin?”
I drew up my T-shirt. She leaned forward, spread her hands over my lower
abdomen, and I felt that slight buzz of warmth as her energy sank into me,
going deep in a searching foray. It felt like forever, though it must have
been only a second or two, before she lifted her hands away.
“Yes,” she said with a trembling smile, her voice thick. “You have life
growing in you.”
She said something else, but I didn’t hear it. A pounding roar had filled my
ears. My drumming heartbeat, I realized, and dimmed down the sound.
“Can you…can you tell how many days old it is?” I asked.
Hannah shook her head. “No. Only that it is as you say, very early in its
being.”
“Your hands are trembling.”
She laughed. “Can you blame me when a part of me knows that it may be my
grandchild I am sensing?”
Seeing my visible distress, her eyes grew somber. “You are not happy.”
“No, Hannah, I am not happy. Far from it.”
I opened the white pharmacy bag and took out the small purple box the
pharmacist had given me. PLAN B was neatly emblazoned across the top of it.
“What is this?” Hannah asked.
“It’s emergency contraceptive. Helps rid you of an unwanted pregnancy if you
take it within the first five days.” I lifted my eyes. Met the healer’s soft
brown ones. “Hannah, if I told you that I have somehow taken demon dead
essence into me, and that it was changing me, could you assure me that this
demon taint…” I hesitated over that word, but could find none better. “Could
you tell me with certainty that it would not affect my child?”
She shook her head, taking the news more calmly that I could have imagined.
Making me wonder what had she seen that she could accept something like this
so readily.
“No, I cannot tell you that. Nor have I ever heard of anything like it
happening before. Mona Lisa, are you sure about the demon taint? That it is
true fact and not something you are, perhaps, imagining?”
“I grew fangs, Hannah, in my human form, and drank down a stag’s blood. It’s
not something I’m imagining.”
“Demons cannot have children,” Hannah said, frowning. “They are of the dead,
and you bear new life in you.”
“Halcyon said that I was becoming Damanôen. Demon living.”
She paled, and I did not know if it was because she recognized the word, or if
it was because I had mentioned the High Prince of Hell’s name. It tended to
have a frightening effect on people.
“What will that do to a child of mine?” I asked her.
She looked at me with eyes wide and lost. “I don’t know.”
“Neither do I. That’s why…Hannah. Could you ease the pregnancy from me?”
“Kill it?” Her face lost every ounce of its color.
If she could speak the plain truth, so could I. “Yes. Could you do that for

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me?”
“Oh, milady,” she whispered, those warm brown eyes stricken. “You do not know
how hard it is for our women to get pregnant. And what it is you are asking of
me. I am a healer, milady.” And I was asking her to take a life.
I remembered that terrible pain that I had felt when I had killed Barrabus.
“Never mind, Hannah, I do know. And I shouldn’t have asked, not when I have
other means at hand.” I looked down at the innocuous looking purple box.
Putting it back inside the white bag, I stood up.
Hannah rose also, gripped my hand. “Milady. Please—”
I interrupted the healer’s plea. I knew what she was going to ask—that I not
do this. That I not abort the precious life growing in me.
“Hannah, will the medicine work on me with my Monère blood?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.” She shook her head helplessly.
I wanted to say: It’s all right, Hannah. But it wasn’t. Everything was far
from all right.
“The baby could be normal. It may not be affected by your demon condition,”
Hannah offered.
“I know. I thought of that. But what if it isn’t normal, Hannah? What if it
isn’t? You and I both know that a demon-human-Monère offspring would be feared
by all, belonging to none. It would be seen as a monster, and they would try
to destroy it as such. Even if I managed to protect it from everybody, it
would still be sought after, persecuted all its life. Either that or shunned.
How can you ask me to bring a child into this world, facing such a fate?”
There was nothing she or I could say to that. With a sweep of her hand, Hannah
deactivated the charm, and we walked back to the house in weighty, sorrowful
silence.

SIXTEEN

I STARED AT the cup of water and the white pill laid out beside it on the desk
before me. I was in my room. Alone. Aquila was downstairs, struggling with the
secret I had burdened him with. I was sorry for that. I knew full well the
weight of it. It was enough to crush even the most valiant heart.
He hadn’t looked at me when he left, and I couldn’t blame him. I could hardly
look at myself either. Killing, taking an enemy’s life in the heat of battle,
was one thing. Taking the life of your unborn child…that was another
completely different act. I wondered if he’d ever forgive me. I wondered if
I’d ever forgive myself.
Energy slid over me, a light familiar feel. A part of my mind processed it,
remembered when and where I had just recently felt it. The privacy charm.
Though I couldn’t see the intruder, I knew who had my arms pinned and secured
behind the chair I sat in. The hands were too big to be Hannah’s.
“Do you have a death wish?” a cool and dangerous voice asked.
“Dante,” I whispered, though I could have shouted it and no one would have
heard me. “Hannah told you.”
He didn’t answer me; his presence here in my room was already an answer. His
energy signature—what all Monère sensed in one another, how we usually knew
when another was near—was spiky, vibrant with strong emotion despite the
coolness of his tone.
The feel of warm metal closing about my wrists, locking with a click, was
almost anticlimactic. As soon as his hands left me, I pulled, holding back
none of my greater strength. To my shock, the restraints held.
“They are not silver chains or demon chains,” Dante said. “They are something
that will hold even a demon…something my mother tells me you are becoming.”
He turned me to face him then, and I saw that the calmness of his voice was
terribly deceptive. The naked fury I glimpsed on his face, making it almost
masklike in its ferocity, made me gasp and lean involuntarily back from him.
Danger! Danger! my body shouted. No need. I could see it clearly enough. His

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eyes glittered with primitive anger, hardening his otherworldly eyes to shards
of pale ice. Sharp enough to cut me to pieces. The amulet he wore about his
neck sparkled as if it blazed beneath the sun—a privacy charm. How he had come
upon me unawares. A different one, I realized, than the one Hannah wore. The
orange of this stone was speckled with black instead of being completely
clear.
“Did you take it yet?” he demanded in a voice harder than even the stone he
wore around his neck.
“Wh-what?”
“The pills,” Dante spat out. I recoiled from him, almost toppling over my
chair in my effort to get away. It teetered precariously for a moment on two
legs, before he set it back down gently. And that gentle, deliberate maneuver,
that one point of calmness in the face of the incipient violence threatening
to spew over me, unnerved me even more than if he had slammed the chair back
down, expressing some of the anger harshly carved on his face.
He leaned that face down into mine, and repeated slowly, calmly, dangerously,
“Did you take the pills?”
I shook my head wildly, my teeth chattering beyond my control. I had never
felt such awful, overwhelming fear before. “No, I d-didn’t take them yet.”
“Is this it?” he demanded, looking down at the opened packet. I had taken out
one pill and laid it on the desk. The other still resided in its little
plastic window.
“Yes, just the two pills.”
“Do not lie to me,” he said in a low and terrible voice that trembled with
violence barely leashed. “Not now. Not when I’m like this.” It was part
threat, part plea, as if he was asking my help to keep him in control.
It only served to spike my fear higher.
“I’m not lying, I promise you. It was just two pills, you can read the
instructions. One to take now, the second one twelve hours later.”
“Mona Lisa.” He closed his eyes and said my name in a swirling mix of agony
and hatred. As if it meant both redemption and despair to him.
Those pale blue eyes opened again, focused on me, and I felt something wash
over me as they drew me into their cold and furious depths. His eyes turned
completely silver, and didn’t just gleam brightly at me. They began to
actually glow.
“Sleep,” he said.
His words traveled from the surface of my ears down into the vortex of me,
penetrating deep inside like an echoing, expanding wave sweeping to the center
of my being. And I was unable to resist his command, though I tried. My
eyelids lowered as if a heavy weight bore them down. And I slept.
When I came to awareness again, it was on a silent scream. Pain throbbed my
neck, and I tried to put a hand there, expecting to find it hacked open, with
a fountain of blood gushing from it, as in my dream. A dream that had been
mine, and yet not mine. But I couldn’t move. My hands were restrained behind
my back, secured to the bed I was lying on.
I blinked, disoriented, ripped from the past and thrown back into the present.
Had I dreamed of my death before, from that other lifetime? I couldn’t
remember. And was thankful for that.
Hours had past. It was daylight now, with the sun at its highest point in the
sky, just past noon. I turned my head and became aware of the fact that I was
in a cheap motel room. And that Dante lay beside me, asleep. He was adrift in
peaceful slumber, gentle in repose. And I realized that I wasn’t afraid of him
like this. In sleep he was relaxed, free of all strain, all burdens of the
past. He had an interesting face: not perfect, not stunningly handsome, not
blindingly beautiful. An interesting face, as I said. Strong, aggressively
molded with a sharp beak of a nose and a square, firm jaw. The lips, though,
were soft and full—generous lips. It was a face of character. And so it should
be, having lived so many lifetimes.
Dante. I whispered his name deep inside me, and felt sadness stir in me. Have
I made us enemies once more?

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As if my mind had touched him, or my emotions, he blinked his eyes open. He
smiled when he saw me, a sweet, unburdened smile.
“Mona Lisa,” he said in a voice that was still half caught up in dreams. Then
reality and remembrance came crashing back into those eyes and I watched them
cool, harden against me…and wanted to cry as fear renewed itself in me.
He could have killed me, came the sudden realization. At any time, he could
have killed me had he wanted to…with his privacy charm, his forceful,
compelling eyes. I hadn’t known that it was possible for one Monère to compel
another Monère like that. That a nondemon could wield that much power.
“Dante,” I said softly. “What are you doing?”
He sat up, totally alert now, his face so different from its softness in
repose. It wasn’t any one detail but the entirety of it—the forcefulness of
his nature, his ruthless will—that shaped and changed his features, making
them harsh, unrelenting.
“I’m protecting my child.”
“It might not even be yours. Chances are that it’s not. It usually takes
longer than two days for a pregnancy test to work; it needs eight days at
least, usually. And that’s how I found out, Dante, through a human pregnancy
test.”
He didn’t look at me, but a muscle jumped in his jaw. Then he turned his head,
and his eyes captured mine…no other word for it. Nothing else to define the
sensation of being held by those pale eyes—as if you could not look away, even
if your life depended on it.
“There is nothing more guaranteed to rouse my ire than if someone harms or
threatens one of my family,” he said in a very gentle voice that sent chills
skittering down my spine. Barrabus’s death by my hand flashed again through my
mind.
“Save your breath,” he said. “Nothing you say will convince me that the child
growing in you is not mine.”
“You…” I wet lips that were suddenly dry. “You can’t think to hold me prisoner
for nine months.”
He braced his hands around me and leaned his face down into mine, dominating
my vision, my world, for a moment. “There is nothing I cannot do,” he said
softly.
It was fear that he was right, fear at what he was determined to do—was
doing—and my helplessness before his will that made me lash out at him
suddenly, viciously.
“If that is true, then why don’t you break your curse and save your dying
bloodline?”
His face grew even harder, if that was possible. Became rock-like. A charged
stillness fell with just the sound of our harsh breathing. Then he moved.
He did nothing more than draw back away from me, but I flinched.
He turned away from me, the muscles in his back and shoulders knotted tight.
“You do not have to fear me striking you,” he said.
“Just cutting off my head, right?” I said with a half-hysterical sob.
He turned, glanced sharply at me. “You remember?”
“Not really.”
I remember killing your father. I remember the feel of my own death by your
hand, but I don’t remember how it was done. I said none of this to him,
though.
“Please, Dante. What you are doing will stir not just my men, but everyone
that Halcyon can rally from High Court and all the other surrounding
territories to hunt you down. And not just you, but your mother, father, and
brother. Please don’t do this.”
“My mother was aware of that possibility when she came and told me of the new
life you carry. My family will have gone by now. They will be safe.”
“Dante, not just Monère will be hunting us. Eventually demon dead will be
tracking us also. I’m Halcyon’s chosen mate. Didn’t your father and mother
tell you that?”
He growled, a silent emanation felt more from the vibration of his energy

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spiking rather than from any real audible resonance. It was even more
frightening than simple sound would have been.
“You are my mate. You carry my child.” He crawled over me, lay the entire
length of his long body over mine, bracing himself on his arms. That one
thoughtful gesture amidst the dominating one—sparing me the pain his full
weight would have caused me with my hands handcuffed behind me the way they
were—brought those annoying tears welling back up in my eyes. They overflowed,
spilled down my cheeks.
His harsh face softened, and a surprisingly gentle finger brushed away the
wetness. “Don’t cry, dulcaeta.”
It was a word my inner stirring consciousness half-remembered. An endearment.
It made my breath hitch. “Dante, please. Let me go.”
His face hovered over mine, his eyes grave, inscrutable. “I will. If you
promise to do nothing to harm the child you carry.”
“What if doing nothing is the greatest harm?”
“How can allowing life to grow be harmful?”
“A part of me is becoming demon dead, Dante.”
He rolled off me to lie on the bed, his eyes staring up into the ceiling. “My
mother told me. So?”
“So?” I repeated, incredulously. “I’m becoming Damanôen. Demon living. It’s
changing me, Dante. I’m growing fangs in human form and drinking blood. If
it’s changing me, how can it not change what is growing inside of me?”
“So you wish to kill our baby before it has even a chance to live? To end its
life when you do not even know if it will be affected, as you fear.”
I tried to roll over to face him, but the restraints would not allow it.
Scooting back up toward the headboard, I sat up instead. “Dante, you of all
people…you know what it’s like to be cursed. If my child is different, not
just part human, part Monère—that’s bad enough—but part demon as well, it will
be looked upon as a freak, a monster, a curse. Something to be hunted down and
killed as anything different, anything perceived as a threat would be. That’s
just how our world is.”
“You are determined to view it as a curse. But what if it’s not? What if it
ends a curse, instead?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said that fate crossed out paths once more for a second chance. What if
that second chance is this child that we have made together? Creating new life
to balance the lives taken in the past. Mona Lisa.” His blue eyes deepened.
“Please, do not kill our child. Let it live.”
The poignancy in those eyes, and the possibility of his words hammered like a
giant spike into my heart. Broke a sob from me. Oh God. I didn’t know what to
do. What was true, what was not. I didn’t know what was best for the baby.
Would a baby—our baby—truly undo Dante’s curse? Would fate be so warped as to
play our lives this way in this second twining? Of course it would, something
in me whispered.
I trembled. Said in a tremulous voice, “Dante, whatever my sins in the past, I
will gladly pay for them. But I don’t want my baby to have to pay for the
mistakes that we made. To bear the burden of our past deeds.”
Sitting up, he reached a hand out to me and laid a rough, callused palm gently
over my stomach. “Of all the things in the past I have done, this one thing,
making fresh, innocent life with you…how could that ever be a mistake?”
I didn’t know what to say or do or feel anymore.
As the silence spun out, he drew his hand away and rose to his feet, his
expression closing down once more. “Come, we must be on our way. Do you need
to use the toilet before we go?”
To my hot embarrassment, I did.
No matter how much I begged and pleaded and then threatened, he would not undo
the cuffs. I ended up using the toilet and then standing, a painful flush
sweeping over my entire body, as he wiped me down afterward.
“You cannot expect to keep me like this for the next nine months!” I said,
utterly appalled and humiliated.

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“I will do whatever I have to do to give our baby a chance. You can stop this
at anytime, Mona Lisa. Think about what I’ve said.”
As if I could do anything else, I thought as he led me out into the bright
sun. Even wearing a baseball hat, sunglasses, and light jacket, the warm solar
rays must have pained him. If they did, he gave no indication of it.
Part of me wanted to lie, to give him the promise he’d asked of me—that I
would not abort the life growing in me. But I could not bring myself to do
that, to lie to him. I’d hurt him so much already—brought a curse down upon
him and his family—how could I hurt him anymore?
How can you think about harming his child then? a voice inside me whispered.
I don’t know that it is his child, I argued back.
Part of you believes it is his.
Hard to argue with yourself.
Now who’s acting like the crazy one?
Go away! I told the bothersome voice as Dante seated me in the front passenger
seat. Slumping back against the soft leather, I shut my eyes, blocking out the
sight of him. Wishing it were as easy to ban him from my thoughts.
Think about what I have said, he had asked.
I did, as the miles rolled by.
I did.

SEVENTEEN

WE PASSED A sign announcing we were leaving Mississippi and approaching the
Arkansas state line. One moment we were driving sixty-five miles an hour, the
maximum speed limit, the next moment we were suddenly backed up in traffic,
ten cars in front of us. There was some sort of road block ahead, with police
lights flashing.
“You’re heading north,” I said.
Dante didn’t bother answering.
In a few minutes, we would be entering another Queen’s territory. I wondered
if that would be better for us or worse.
“They’re checking car registrations, making sure they are valid,” Dante
informed me, apparently already having ascertained the reason for the
checkpoint up ahead. He seemed unconcerned, which I took to mean that his
registration was current and up-to-date. A pity. The thought flashed in my
mind and my body tensed: Should I call out to the policeman for help?
“Don’t try it,” Dante warned without looking at me. “I won’t hesitate to hurt
him.”
“Damn you, Dante.”
He smiled bleakly. “I have been damned for a long time now.”
“Don’t you dare try to make me feel sorry for you,” I said in a low, heated
voice as we pulled up to the waiting patrolman.
“I would not dare, milady.” Rolling down the window, he gave an easy smile.
The patrolman didn’t smile back. “I’ll have to ask you to pull over onto the
roadside.”
“What’s the matter, Officer?” Dante asked politely. “My registration is
current, and I haven’t been drinking.”
“I just need to look over your driver’s license and proof of insurance,” the
officer answered just as politely, but his tone was insistent. “It will only
take a few minutes, sir.”
Nodding, Dante pulled off the road as instructed and parked the car. Instead
of walking over to us, the patrolman returned to his car. With our acute
senses, both of us heard him clearly as he called in a match on the stolen car
that had just been reported. He recited the license plate and requested
backup.
Dante cursed.
“You’re driving a stolen car?” I asked. Was he a common criminal as well as a

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kidnapper?
Those pale blue orbs turned and glared at me. “No, this is my car. Your people
must have called it in.”
Dante’s door was flung suddenly open.
“Right on the first guess.” Chami shimmered into view, holding a silver dagger
to Dante’s throat. He took possession of Dante’s knife and gun, and reached
for the car ignition keys.
“Uh-uh-uh. Keep your hands on the steering wheel,” my chameleon chided in
warning as Dante tensed. “I will not hesitate to cut off your head here in
front of all these nice people,” he said in a low, deadly voice.
Dante must have believed Chami’s threat, I certainly did, because he kept his
hands on the wheel as Chami removed the keys and pocketed them. When Chami
eased back on the pressure of the blade, I saw a thin red line of blood
trickle down Dante’s neck from where the knife had cut into his skin.
I choked back my instinctive cry—Don’t hurt him, Chami—swallowing back the
words because I knew that if I tethered the violence on Chami’s end, it would
explode out from Dante.
Oh Goddess, please don’t let them hurt each other.
Chami drew out a thin whistle and blew it, three short blasts. The frequency
was too high pitched for humans to hear. But animals—and Monère—would be able
to hear it clearly.
“Hey, what’s going on?” the patrolman demanded, striding quickly back to us.
There was only surprise not alarm in his voice at seeing a third person
suddenly with us. From his tone, I could tell that he hadn’t seen the knife
yet.
“Milady, if you can kindly take care of the nice policeman,” Chami requested,
keeping his eyes and knife on Dante.
“That’ll be a little hard for me to do, Chami. I’m handcuffed.”
“To the car? Or just behind your back?”
“Behind my back.”
“Hey you, in the black shirt. Step away from the car,” the officer ordered,
wariness in his voice now. He released the safety strap from his gun holster.
“Can you open the door and scoot out?” Chami asked. “I cannot handle both of
them.”
I had a moment to think, Well, duh. I should have thought of that. Then I was
blindly groping for the door handle. My hands fell on the lever, pulled it,
and I started to topple backward as the door swung open behind me.
“Careful,” Dante barked, grabbing my shoulder. That was the only thing that
saved me from tumbling out of the car. He looked furious. There was no concern
at all over the knife that was cutting deep into the side of his neck,
trailing a small rivulet of blood down his shirt. He was focused entirely on
me.
“Release her,” Chami snarled.
When he was assured that I had my balance once more, he did, and launched
himself at Chami with sudden, swift violence, knocking Chami’s dagger aside
with a swing of his arm, the warrior bracelet hidden beneath the jacket
striking away the blade with jarring force.
They fell from my sight to the ground as I awkwardly wriggled out of the car,
my heart pounding.
“Officer, help me,” I cried with unfeigned terror. “He kidnapped me. Tied up
my wrists.”
“What the hell,” the policeman muttered, his attention diverted to me. He
lifted the gun he had trained on the two wrestling men, and strode around the
car to me.
The officer’s eyes locked with mine, and I had him. Power burned up from
within me and spilled out in an invisible gush.
“You see only two men fighting. No weapons, no knife, no blood. A domestic
matter that you do not wish to be concerned with,” I said in a voice that
throbbed with the power I had called up, compelling him to my will. “You will
go back to your car and report that you were mistaken about the vehicle. The

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license plate was Alpha-Bravo-George, not Charlie. Then you will wave the
other cars by, and drive away, forgetting about us.”
The officer returned to his car, obediently radioed in the correction, and
waved on the few cars that had slowed down to gawk at us. When he had cleared
the road of traffic, when no other cars were in sight, he pulled away.
“Stop,” I cried, rushing to the two warriors fighting in deadly silence.
Without any human witnesses to hinder him now, Chami winked out of
sight—chameleon. An unseen punch sent Dante’s head swinging back. He
retaliated with a back-handed blow that caught Chami in the stomach,
shimmering the chameleon back into view. Chami’s dagger came stabbing down.
“No!” I screamed.
Dante caught Chami’s wrist, the bloody dagger point an inch from his chest.
His eyes locked on Chami, and I felt the roil of power spark the air. Saw
those glacier blue eyes turn silver and take on that eerie glow.
“Cease,” Dante commanded, and Chami stopped fighting. “Give me your knife.”
Chami relinquished it to Dante, and Dante drew it back. To behead him!
“Don’t!” I threw myself between them, unable to do anything else but use
myself as a shield, with my hands bound as they were behind me. Dante’s
mesmerizing silver eyes glowed down at me, bloodlust filling them. “Don’t hurt
him. Please,” I begged.
“He put you at risk. You almost fell.”
“He doesn’t know I’m pregnant.”
“He almost harmed the baby!”
The almost mindless rage burning behind those words washed over me and set my
body trembling, with the knife poised just over my neck where Dante had
stopped its swift descent.
“Please, Dante,” I whispered. “He didn’t know.”
But you did, the voice inside of me said. You would have harmed your child
knowingly and deliberately.
For a moment, I wondered if he would kill us both.
Dante lowered the dagger, and I collapsed back against Chami with shuddering
relief.
“Thank you,” I breathed.
I didn’t fight him when he drew me away from Chami.
Dante focused his will, those glowing eyes, back on the chameleon. “You will
not move or speak for thirty minutes.” When he released him from his gaze,
Chami fell to the ground and lay there unmoving.
I turned back to look at Chami lying there helpless as Dante led me back to
the car.
“He’s in the sun,” I said.
“Only for thirty minutes. Not the four hours I could have commanded instead.”
His clipped words had me swallowing back my protest. Indeed, with but a few
different words, the outcome could have been deadly instead of just a short
discomfort.
I’d forgotten about battle lust, I realized, when he opened the car door and
gently sat me back inside. All gentleness fled as he turned those pale,
gleaming eyes on me. The color was blue once more. I gasped beneath their
cold, burning light. Gasped again as he lunged forward and captured my mouth
in a harsh, punishing kiss.
A whimper of fear escaped from my lips as the weight of his body pressed me
back, and his warrior’s presence, fierce and battle sharp, sparked against my
own energy, making me aware of the ferocity he had kept chained. All that
aggression, tightly leashed, he channeled now into me, in that kiss. In the
coarse movements of his hands as he shoved up my shirt. On my bra, which he
tore away with one rough pull, exposing my breasts.
I wrenched my face away from him. “Dante, stop!” I cried, struggling to push
him off me as he lowered my seat down. “We’re by the side of the road. Anyone
can drive by and see us.”
“Don’t fight me!” His lips ran feverishly over my face in wild, nipping
caresses, violence barely contained. Dangerous touches that both thrilled and

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scared the hell out of me. He was like a dangerous, roaring wildfire,
threatening to consume all that it touched.
“You held my hand, stopped a kill. You left me no other way to channel my
aggression. Yield to me.” His breath struck my face in heated gusts as he
undid his pants. Then my pants and underwear were down by my ankles, my body
nude and painfully exposed, my body, heart, and mind in terrible upheaval.
Jesus Christ, we were by the fucking roadside.
His voice was gritty urgency, his eyes burning need. “Please,” he whispered
roughly, and swooped down, capturing my mouth, stealing my breath. Stealing
the will to fight him.
I yielded in the face of his need, and stopped fighting him.
My body’s soft acceptance of him eased some of that overwhelming urgency. And
in that momentary lull, his need sparked my own.
Pulling my lips from him, I said, “No blood,” in a hard, uncompromising tone.
“No blood,” he promised and nipped my lower lip, three parts caress, one part
punishment. Dominating male.
“Hurry,” I murmured, so terribly conscious of our exposure. Of my nudity.
“First you tell me to stop. Now you tell me to hurry up and take you.”
Amusement mixed with the heated urgency of his movements, like fire and
ice—how he made me feel.
He pressed between my legs, and I felt the bold rub of him naked and hard
against my thigh. The utter outrageousness of our situation—by the open
road!—the utter dangerousness of our situation—a powerful warrior still flying
high from battle, and me, bound and helpless beneath him, with him poised over
me, ready to take me…God help me, but it set a part of me on fire. Spiked my
own desire.
His hand slid up my legs, cupped me. And with but that one touch, not even a
caress, my core heated, grew moist and damp, wetting his palm.
“Oh God.” He groaned, and with no other preparation, he thrust into me with
gentle, insistent force. He pushed in, groaned as he sank into my honeyed
wetness. Tunneled in deeper with a swiveling gyration of his hips that had me
gasping and bending my knees to arch up against him.
He withdrew, pumped back into me with restrained ferocity, his eyes wild,
burning with lust. Another withdrawal, another gentle push back in as he
watched me with those uncanny pale eyes, making me feel like a helpless
butterfly he had captured and pinned. It was a devastating feeling, mixed in
with the wet, thrilling pleasure he evoked with each stroke. Too much, those
eyes, piercing down into me as if they could see into the very deepest part of
my soul. And perhaps he could. As if knowing his gaze was more than I could
bear, he dipped his head, and I felt his lips warm against my breast. Felt his
mouth take in a tight, pouty nipple, bite down on it.
I cried out, bowed up into him, and he pressed me back down into the seat with
a deep stroke into my body as he sucked on my nipple, tugging on it with less
than gentle force. He sank into me again with another insistent thrust,
another fierce tug—those two simultaneous movements—and pulled light from me,
spilling it out onto my skin, running it down over my body, the moon’s
captured glow within us. When the radiance spread to where his flesh joined
inside mine, when my light touched him there, it set him ablaze. He lit up
above me like a Christmas tree, beautiful to behold—his taut muscles, the
driving urgency of his body, his male aggression tightly chained and channeled
into me. A warrior, stark and powerful, bold and beautiful. Yet vulnerable in
his need for my softness, for my light.
“Yes,” I sighed as he rose and fell above me, my body taking him in with soft,
willing submission. He shifted, braced himself up on one arm, freeing the
other hand to run down my body, palm my bottom. His finger whispered over my
anal rim in the lightest caress.
“Come for me,” he said, his face harsh, tightly clenched above me. Another
sweet deliberate press of his finger there, teasing my back hole while his
thickness filled and drove tightly into my other entrance…that one added touch
and I overflowed. My release spilled out, and I came for him as he had asked

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me to, helpless to do otherwise. I imploded beneath his stroking caresses, his
inner one and deliberate outer one, and I shattered in a brilliant, shaking,
shuddering climax.
He drank down my light, then gave into his own release. One more deep stroke,
pushing through my spasming tightness, and I felt him grow still, jerk harshly
inside as his wet ejaculation spewed into me.
Until that moment, I hadn’t realized just how restrained his passion had been.
Only in his climax did he truly let himself go. Throwing back his head, Dante
roared his release to the heavens with a primitive cry. So primal, so
beautifully savage he was with his neck corded, with the agony and bliss of
release carved harshly on his face. One fixed moment where every muscle, every
tendon in his body seized tight…then came the sweet thrill of release. The
jetting bliss of satisfaction as he relaxed down over me. I felt his weight
blanket me for a brief, lovely moment—too short—then he was pulling his body
from mine, lifting himself off. His eyes were heavy-lidded, slumberous, as he
crouched down beside me, opened the glove compartment, and took out a packet
of wipes.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked. Even his voice was more soothing in its resonance
now, like melted honey.
“No.”
“Your hands?”
“Uncomfortable from the handcuffs. Can you release me?”
His eyes slid away as he pulled out a wipe. “You know I cannot.”
Without another word, he cleaned me and dressed me. Maybe there was a limit to
how embarrassed you could get. I’d apparently reached mine. I sat there and
did nothing as he finished caring for me. Then wiped himself down and zipped
himself back up.
He turned suddenly to look up into the sky. An eagle circled high above us. So
high I almost didn’t feel it—that faint, shimmering presence of another
Monère.
It was Aquila shifted into his bird form. Drawn to our location by Chami’s
whistle blasts.
“Maudrëa,” Dante said, muttering an imprecation in a language so old it had
almost been forgotten by all. He shut my door and went around to the back,
opening the trunk.
My eyes widened in alarm as he drew out a rifle. “No, don’t. You can’t! It’s
Aquila,” I said, twisting around in my seat. “You might kill him.”
“That is my intention,” he said coldly. He slid two bullets in, chambering the
rounds.
I looked at him with horror, then turned my head skyward. “Aquila,” I shouted.
“Go away. Leave us!”
A shot rang out with a flat crack, and the eagle jerked, tilted. He fluttered
in the sky for a moment, still airborne. Then he began to fall.
“No!” I moaned as I watched Aquila plummet from the sky, silent, graceful, so
terribly still. Blood washed down his right wing, streaking his feathers like
wine-red paint as he spiraled, until trees cut him from our sight, but not our
sound. I heard the rustling of leaves, the snapping of twigs as he crashed
through the foliage, a discordant cascade. Then that final, terrible thud as
he hit the ground.
“Aquila.” His name was a mournful, teary sound slipping unconsciously from me.
My mind, my body felt numb. I didn’t even register my own actions, my bound
hands blindly seeking the door handle, lifting the lever. I wasn’t aware of
what I was doing until I was hauled halfway back across the seat toward the
driver’s side, with Dante’s hard furious face above me. He reached across,
slammed shut the door I had just opened.
“Stop it,” Dante commanded. Shifting me back into my seat, he pulled out my
seat belt strap. “Stop crying,” he said. Only then did I realize that I was
making harsh, guttural sounds deep in my throat. Like an animal that was being
beaten.
I leaned forward, preventing him from latching the seat belt, and slid back

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against my door, twisting against his hold almost hysterically. “No, I have to
go to him!”
“He’s not dead,” he said, giving me a little shake when I continued to fight
him. “Mona Lisa, look at me! He’s not dead.”
His words calmed me down enough that I stopped struggling for a second. As
soon as I did, Dante snapped my seat belt in place, then gripped my arms. “I
just shot his wing, not his heart. He will heal.”
“He fell so far. Was so still,” I whispered brokenly. “And there was so much
blood.”
“He’s not human. Only taking out the head or heart will kill us, remember?
Listen. Take a breath and listen, and you can hear his heartbeat.”
He slid his hand beneath his shirt, deactivating the privacy shield, and I
heard it for an instant…a faint, rapid heartbeat out in the woods. The sound
disappeared as he reactivated the charm. I sobbed then. Sobbed as if my heart
would break as the car pulled onto the road, taking me away from my fallen
men. Both of them injured because of me.
We drove for a time, not long, or at least it did not seem so, before he
pulled off the road into a gas station, and parked in front of a minimarket. I
sat there, staring straight ahead, not seeing anything. Numb. He glanced at
me, then went inside, keeping an eye on me through the glass doors. No need. I
was not running anywhere. I didn’t have the heart or energy to do so. Lethargy
had gripped me, a cottony distance separating me from the rest of the world
and its trifling concerns. He returned with a soft drink, some chips, a candy
bar. Driving to the back of the parking lot, he parked there, away from prying
eyes. He said something, opened his mouth and spoke, but I wasn’t aware of his
actual words. Not until he lifted the can of soda and put a plastic straw to
my lips, intruding into the soft bubble that surrounded me.
“Drink this,” he said.
Because it was easier to do that than fight him, I took two sips before
turning my head away and losing myself once more in the emptiness of not
thinking, not feeling.
The door shut as he got out of the car and came around to my side. Opening my
door, he crouched in front of me, ripped open the candy bar, and held it to my
mouth. I looked past it without interest.
“One bite,” he urged, nudging the chocolate against my lips.
I frowned. Felt a brief flare of irritation at the intrusion. What did he
want, I wondered?
“One bite,” Dante repeated, “and I’ll leave you alone.”
Because that was what I desired most, I took a bite and swallowed. The peace I
sought, however, did not come. Not because of his actions. But because of
another’s.
Like the silent demon he was, Halcyon suddenly appeared. He was dressed in his
usual shirt of white silk, with diamonds glinting at the cuffs. Only his
attire was civilized. Not his actions.
His long, sharp nails sank with almost sickening ease into Dante’s flesh, his
fingertips half-buried in Dante’s shoulder. Blood—and the demon’s
presence—stirred my unholy hunger to life, and it roared past my numbness,
shattering it with a desire to feed that overrode my emotional state. That did
not care if my men were hurt or killed. The only thing it cared about was the
crimson, shiny blood welling up from beneath the thin barrier of skin.
My fangs burst forth, eager to sink into the meal that was bleeding before me.
But it was not to be. With one casual fling, Halcyon sent Dante flying back
into the copse of trees lining the lot. One quick glance at me, then Halcyon
was gone, moving almost too fast to see, gone after the prey he had casually
flung away.
“No!” I screamed, and wanted to howl with thwarted hunger, with terrible need.
I could not think, could not feel with that overwhelming, driving thirst for
blood overtaking me.
The sound of a door opening drew my attention to other prey as the gas station
attendant came running out.

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“Hey, what’s going on out here?”
He was a bald, middle-aged man with a ponderous belly. But it was not his fat
belly I was interested in, only his blood. I was on him in an instant, with no
knowledge of moving, of snapping the seat belt, opening the door. His
heartbeat surged faster, began to race like a thumping rabbit when he saw my
fangs. How delectable, that fast rhythmic pounding, that stink of fear.
“What the—” He gurgled as I struck, fastening onto his neck. He was a big man,
bigger than I, weighing almost twice as much, straining wildly, pushing
against me with his hands to no avail. Such a delicate creature. So easily
broken, was my impression before the richness of his blood filled my mouth and
ran down my throat like the sweetest and most intoxicating wine. Yes! I
mentally cried as I sucked and pulled with long, succulent swallows, drinking
down that potent elixir of life. This is what I need.
My body sang with the richness pouring into it, and a moan slipped out, mixing
with the juicy, slurping sounds I made as I feasted on him. A moan that came
not from me as I first thought, but from the thing I was drinking from.
Instead of pushing me away now, his arms wrapped around me. It was that
protruding belly nudging against me, the odd, alien feel of it, that broke me
from my thralling hunger. That made me realize, suddenly, what I was doing.
I pulled away.
If you feed your hunger instead of fighting it, you will be able to control it
better. It does not take much blood.
Halcyon’s words haunted me now as my eyes fixed upon the red blood trickling
down the attendant’s neck. He seemed completely unaware of the fact that he
was bleeding, or perhaps uncaring of it as he reached out to me. I let his
beefy arms wrap around me, draw me to him, and bent my head back to the man.
Not to drink, but to lick the puncture wounds closed.
Stop bleeding, I thought, picturing it in my mind, and felt the blood grow
sluggish, clotting beneath my tongue.
Something in me—something still so terribly hungry that had barely begun to
have its need met—some demon part of me wept at the sight of that closing
wound.
No! it cried. More!
But I denied it.
“Look at me,” I said, my voice trembling, not with horror, but with the effort
of restraint. When the man turned to me, I captured him with my eyes. “You cut
your neck against the edge of a shelf. You will have no memory of anything
that occurred out here. Nor will any further disturbance outside draw your
attention for the next hour. Go back inside and cover your neck with some
Band-Aids.”
His arms dropped away, and he walked obediently back inside the store. My
control stretched only so far. Only when he was completely gone from my
sight—like a box of chocolates covered up once more, hidden from view—was I
able to turn my attention away from him and toward the woods.
Halcyon. That one thought of him and a vision of those demon nails ripping
open Dante’s arm flashed to me like a waking dream. In it I saw Halcyon turn
and look at me. In that brief moment of distraction, Dante struck him with his
dagger, burying it to the hilt in Halcyon’s side.
I saw, felt the pain of it. And felt the anger, the rage over the spilling of
his demon blood. It spewed up like bubbling lava from within Halcyon, making
his eyes glow red.
Leave us, he commanded, and cut the mental bond between us.
I staggered at the sudden severing.
“No,” I whispered. Casting my senses wide, I let them guide me, following the
pull of the Monère warrior and my demon sire. It guided me to where they
fought, and as I came upon them, I saw with my eyes what I had seen in that
vision: demon blood dripping sluggishly from Halcyon’s side, his eyes red and
enraged, the very air trembling with his fury.
His skin rippled as if a pebble had been skipped across its surface, breaking
the calm, stirring the demon beast that lurked beneath. Dante circled him,

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knife in hand, his lower abdomen torn into ribbons of flesh where Halcyon had
sliced him with his nails. His eyes glowed silver with his own power and an
aura of danger clung to him like a second skin. But Halcyon, it seemed, was
immune to this mesmerizing power.
“No!” I said louder, drawing their attention.
Their forces hit me separately. Dante’s luminescent silver eyes pinned me in
place as he whispered, “Stop.” And the silent mental command Halcyon flung at
me. Stay.
I froze in place, unable to move, mentally cursing them both as they rushed
each other, coming together in a flash of tanned skin—one lighter brown, the
other darker gold. Both of them armed. But it was ten demon nails against one
silver blade.
Foolish Dante was the aggressor, with Halcyon welcoming his attack with a
cruel, taunting smile. They struck at each other savagely, moving with lethal
beauty, a dance of fast movement, strikes and countering blows that was almost
beautiful to watch were it not so frighteningly deadly.
Dante rushed Halcyon again and again with almost reckless daring, the silver
blade flashing in his hand, his metal bracelets glinting darkly at his wrists.
Were it not for the wrist guards, he would have been completely torn apart by
Halcyon’s nails, which were not even claws yet, just his normal inch-long
nails as the Demon Prince wrestled back his beast’s change, retaining his man
form.
They came together again in a stunning flurry of strikes and blurring
movement, and broke apart with new injuries scored along Dante’s thighs, his
arms. Halcyon had only the one knife wound, terrible enough—it had almost
caused Halcyon’s demon beast to emerge.
All I could do was watch, frozen by both their wills. And inwardly scream. I
found I didn’t have to wait for Hell. It had found and captured me, here and
now.
“Do you know who I am?” Halcyon asked, his voice crooning, silky menace. Even
in his human form he was a fearsome sight, his red eyes burning with Hell’s
fury, his long nails coated with blood, a cold smile twisting his lips.
“You are the Prince of Hell,” Dante said, and lunged at him with the knife.
Halcyon danced gracefully away, swiping downward as he did. His razor-sharp
nails came up against Dante’s blocking metal bracelet, scraped over it with a
discordant screech.
“You know who I am,” Halcyon said, “yet you do not fear me.”
“Why should I fear someone who will never have any dominion over me?” Dante
growled, his silver eyes glowing brightly. He attacked again, pressing
forward, uncaring of the new wounds he incurred, focused only on driving that
knife again into the Demon Prince.
They sprang apart.
“How did you find us?” Dante demanded.
A fast, almost careless swipe of those nails, and the top of Dante’s shirt was
sliced open, spilling his amulet into view.
“Did you think your stone’s small magic could keep me from finding my mate? My
own blood?” Halcyon’s smile turned mockingly cruel. I’d never seen him like
this before.
As if he knew my thoughts, those burning eyes turned to me for a second. “I am
not always nice, Mona Lisa.”
Dante chose that moment to strike again. But this time it seemed Halcyon’s
inattention had been deliberate. The Demon Prince moved again, so fast I
didn’t see him stir, and Dante was suddenly pinned on the ground, the silver
dagger now in Halcyon’s hand.
“What’s to stop me from killing you now?” Halcyon taunted as his fangs
lengthened to sharp, cutting points.
“Nothing,” Dante answered, his face impassive.
“You still have no fear.”
“I do not fear death,” Dante said. “It’s not staying dead that torments me.”
“I shall do my best to see that you stay dead.” With that silky promise,

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Halcyon raised the dagger he had seized.
Dante’s smile was brief, bitter. “Not even you can grant me that ease, Demon
Prince.”
Power surged, thrummed the air as the demon part of me came to the fore,
shattering the separate spells that had been placed on me.
“No, Halcyon!” I screamed. “Don’t. I carry his child.”
I swayed, freed of the mental bonds, but had no power to move. All my energy
had been used up.
“Don’t,” I whispered as I sank to the ground. Into dark swirling oblivion.

I WOKE UP to find two concerned faces peering down at me. To see pale blue
eyes no longer glowing, and dark chocolate ones no longer demon red. Nothing
like announcing you’re pregnant and then fainting to get some attention.
I started to sit up, but was pressed back down by two pairs of hands. My
handcuffs, I noticed, had been removed.
“Easy, ena,” Halcyon murmured.
“Lie back down, dulcaeta.”
Tender words—wife, beloved. Old words spoken in a tongue that I remembered
from another lifetime. Tears sprang to my eyes. Those blasted, stupid tears.
But fury was the cause of them this time.
“Get your bloody hands off of me,” I snarled. “Both of you!”
Surprised, alarmed, they did and I sat up slowly. When all seemed fine, no
tilting of the ground, no dots of whiteness, I snatched Dante by the two torn
edges of his shirtfront. Yanked him to me.
“Don’t you ever freeze me like that again.” I bared my teeth at him and pushed
him away.
Snatching Halcyon next, I caught him by the edge of his shirt and shook him.
“And don’t you ever command me to stay. Like I am your dog!”
I shoved him away, sick with them both, and slowly got to my feet, batting
away the helping hands that reached out to steady me. “Don’t touch me!”
The sight of me screaming and crying seemed to befuddle both demon and Monère
warrior alike.
“Don’t cry,” Dante murmured, his hands opening and closing helplessly by his
side.
“It’s the hormones surging in you,” Halcyon soothed. His words had the
complete opposite effect of what he intended.
I exploded. Literally saw red for a moment. “It’s not the fucking hormones!
It’s you stupid men.” Then I was sobbing.
I angrily wiped the tears away and saw that they were tinged red. I was crying
tears of blood.
“Calm yourself, sweetheart,” Dante murmured. “It can’t be good for the baby.”
I literally shook with my fury. “And you two trying to kill each other in
front of me after freezing me with your commands so that I can’t even speak or
move…that’s good for the baby?”
The two men looked at me, then at each other as if seeking guidance on how to
handle the pregnant, hysterical, part-demon Monère Queen.
The air trembled with another wash of fury. Then, like a cleansing wave, or
perhaps because I could no longer sustain the energy for such wrath, the anger
died away, leaving bitter dregs of its ash in my mouth.
“Are you going to kill each other?” I asked in a dull, flat voice, like soda
that had lost its pop and fizzle.
They shook their heads.
“No,” Halcyon said. “Dante explained…” He paused. “No.”
“And you?” I asked Dante.
He looked at me with sadness, with weariness. “The Demon Prince and I have
come to an understanding. We will no longer try to hurt each other. But
you…What will you do?”
What will you do with my child?
I suddenly felt old and brittle and so tired of it all. The worry, the
fighting, the hurting of so many people.

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“You win,” I said. I was going to leave it to a power, a wisdom greater than
mine. “I will do nothing to harm the child.”
He bowed his head. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“And what of your promise to let me go,” I asked, “now that you have secured
my promise?”
His head lifted so that I saw the flash of his pale blue irises. “Will you
grant me these next few days until the Service Fair? After that, you have my
word that I will be gone from your life.”
“Will you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I nodded. “These next few days,” I agreed. Turning, I walked back to the car.
We backtracked to where we had left Chami, and found a familiar green Suburban
parked by the roadside. Chami sat in the shade of the big vehicle, moving once
more, freed of the compulsion. Faint redness colored his face, neck, and
hands, but that seemed to be the extent of his injuries. Aquila on the other
hand, sitting next to him, was more severely damaged, but not as badly as I
had feared. Dontaine and two of his men, Marcus and Jayden, who I recognized
from the practice session, were field dressing Aquila’s wound. Their surprise
when they saw me accompanied by my kidnapper and my Demon Prince was enough to
drop the men’s jaws.
I brushed past them to kneel at Aquila’s side. “You shifted back into your
human form.” Someone had loaned Aquila a shirt. His legs gleamed pale and
naked beneath the cloth. “Were your injuries that grave?”
“No, milady,” Aquila was quick to assure me. “Just bruises, some flesh gone
from where the bullet struck me in the arm. Nothing broken, though. I shifted
back into this form so I could report to Dontaine.”
“Are you hurt?” Chami asked. His quick glance down at my belly, and his wary
gaze past me to Dante, told me that he had heard us. That he had been a
silent, frozen witness when Dante had taken me in his post-battle frenzy. He
knew that I was pregnant, and that Dante was likely the father.
“No, I’m fine. The only one, in fact, who is not hurt.” I stood, said to the
others, “It’s over. Halcyon and Dante will explain everything to you later. Or
maybe just confirm what you all already know. I’m too tired for that now. I
just want to go home.” The last sentence came out plaintively.
When Dante moved to take my arm—I think I swayed again—my men drew their
daggers against him.
Explanations, I realized, could not wait.
“Put your weapons away,” I commanded harshly.
Dontaine and his men reluctantly sheathed their daggers.
Maybe it was the steel in my voice. Or perhaps it was just that they were used
to obeying the orders of their Queen, unlike my other men. Whatever the
reason, I was grateful to be obeyed.
“Dante is likely the father of the child I carry,” I stated. “He is a guest,
not a prisoner, for the next several days, until our next Council meeting, at
which time he will be departing. I want no one else hurt in this matter. Do
you understand?”
There was a chorus of “Yes, milady.”
“Good. Let’s go home.”

EIGHTEEN

THINGS RETURNED TO normal, or as normal as they could be under the
circumstances. Dante’s family, who had fled when he had, returned when he
called them back. No word was mentioned of this second snatching. Perhaps
because all understood now why Dante had done what he had done. What perplexed
my people, no doubt, was why I had even considered terminating the life I
carried within me.
Still…understanding only carried you so far. They treated Dante differently

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now. Before, they had seen him as what he had appeared to be—a
twenty-year-old, gifted warrior. The knowledge of his previous life—his
infamous killing of me, and the curse laid upon him—had brought caution and
mistrust to their eyes. Add to this the knowledge that he could compel other
Monère—not just humans, but Monère warriors and Queens—and they looked at him
not only with wary distrust but active fear, melting away in his presence, not
meeting his eyes. Afraid to look into them. Even Dontaine treated him with
careful caution, ceding these last few days entirely to Dante. The father of
my child.
What was it about seeding life in a woman’s womb that gave a man ownership of
her body—in other men’s eyes, at least—during the time she carried that
living, growing being? A perception that none others challenged. My bed had
remained empty since we had returned.
Halcyon had kissed me and returned to his realm. “Until the High Council
meeting,” he had murmured.
It was almost like a mantra muttered among my people and my men. Until the
High Council meeting. Until the Service Fair when Dante, and likely the rest
of his family, would leave us. Amber had called to say that he would not be
coming that Wednesday as per his usual practice. He hadn’t even tried to give
an excuse. He’d simply said, “I will see you in a sennight.” Seven days hence,
when we would travel down to High Court, the seat of Monère rule here on this
continent.
Dontaine slept in the next room—his room now—but he, too, made himself scarce,
pressed no demands, made no requests for my bed. And the man the rest of them
had ceded my body to…he also pressed no demands for my bed. Just my company.
During our days, when darkness fell—that was when our mornings began—he would
sweep into Belle Vista and claim me. He had left me alone in my solitude that
first night back. On the second day, he took me on a picnic, on a grassy knoll
a five-minute stroll from the mansion, within the boundaries of my land. Chami
and Tomas kept watch over us, but stayed a discreet distance away.
Dante fed me food from the basket Rosemary had prepared at his request. It was
packed with odd things. Odd things for a Monère, but things I had acquired a
taste for. Grapes and other fruits. Rolls of bread. Chunks of cheese, all
kinds of cheese—smooth Gouda, sharp cheddar, smoked Brie. None of the others
in the household ate this stuff. Only me…and Dante. He popped the cheese in
his mouth and chewed with relish. When I looked askance at him, he said, “I
grew up among humans, also.”
“This time. What about your other previous lives? Do you remember them?”
He took his time chewing, then swallowing, while he composed his answer. “My
memories are most clear of my last incarnation, and of my first life. That, I
never forget. I get random flashes of other lives, occasionally. I think it’s
my mind’s natural defense, that selective memory. Remembering everything would
probably be too much for one single mind to handle.”
The next day he drove us to New Orleans. We played tourist, ate dinner, and
danced informally afterward in the carriageway outside of Preservation Hall,
swaying to the music of the boisterous jazz band while Tomas kept an eagle-eye
watch over us.
The fourth day, Dante drove me to the county fair, set up in the next town
over, while Aquila trailed behind us in another car. At the fair, he bought me
pink and blue cotton candy, and treated me to carnival games. We popped
balloons with darts, bounced ping-pong balls along the rims of fishbowls, and
won stuffed animals, lots of them, which he continued to trade up for a bigger
prize until we ended up with a huge, stuffed, purple Scooby-Doo almost as tall
as I was.
We twirled on the merry-go-round, the only ride I was permitted on. He stood
beside me as I bobbed gently up and down on my carousel horse. It was on the
down sweep, with laughter bubbling from my lips, when he kissed me. Our mouths
clung, with the sweet taste of spun sugar and the even sweeter enjoyment of
the day flavoring our kiss. Then my painted steed started its slow glide back
up, and we broke apart with the warm taste and touch of each other lingering

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between us like fine, heady perfume.
The fifth night, he took me on a picnic again on the same grassy knoll, but
this time it was different. This time we were alone.
“No guard tonight?” I asked.
“No guard.” Dante’s silver-blue eyes gleamed at me, reflecting the moonlight.
“I promised that we would stay on the property, and asked them for privacy.”
“Why?” My voice came out husky, soft.
“Because I want to make love to you tonight. Will you allow it?”
He’d courted me these last few days. Courted me with laughter, with fun. We’d
played among the humans for a few blissful, irresponsible days. He’d made me
laugh, giving me a respite from my duties and burdens and fears.
“I want this memory of you and I,” he said softly. “Will you give me that to
take away with me?”
The two remaining days until the next Council meeting loomed like a shadow
before us. We hadn’t just played among the humans…we’d played at being human.
As if he was a normal twenty-year-old boy, and I, a girl he was dating, with
the prospect of a happy, finite lifetime together before us, with no other
goal in mind than marriage, the 2.4 requisite kids, a house, and a nice-paying
job to cover the mortgage. It was a sweet, brief illusion. A paper dream that
would rip apart with the first tug of reality. But not yet…not yet. With
deliberate choice, I continued to drift us along in that lovely illusion.
“Yes,” I said. “I will allow it.”
He fed me from his hand. Fast food—Chicken McNuggets, french fries, an apple
pie—and I greedily ate it down. Food that no one else would have thought to
buy for me. His eyes caressed me; he looked at me so tenderly. Why had I ever
feared those eyes, I wondered?
Pushing aside the empty bags, he pulled me into his arms and kissed me with
lips warm and gentle. He laid me down on the soft blanket, and I sighed at the
feel of his body against mine. I pulled the tie from his hair, freed its long
length so that it spilled over and around me like a shining curtain of silken
honey. He kissed me as if he cherished me, as if he loved me, raining soft
kisses down my face and neck to the gentle slope of my abdomen. He paused
there and pressed trembling lips against my skin.
“May I?” His hand hovered above my shirt, asking permission. I nodded, and his
hand slid beneath the soft cotton to lay gentle claim to what lay below it.
I watched him, no words, emotions held at bay. Just simply watched as he
lifted my shirt over my head, tossed it away, as he carefully undid my jeans,
pushing down the denim. I quivered beneath his heated gaze, beneath the
reverent touch of his hand splayed protectively, possessively, over my belly
where our child grew inside of me. My eyes fell on a ring I’d never seen him
wear before. I felt the cool metal band warm as it touched my skin. Watched as
the smooth, ugly gray stone flared with power, changing into a sparkling
aquamarine color. With that pulse of power, two life forces shimmered into
view—mine, a pale shimmering golden aura just above my skin, and below it,
part of it and yet separate and distinct, was a tiny, delicate blue bubble,
not much bigger than a tennis ball.
“Is that the baby? Its life force?” I asked in an awed whisper.
“Yes.” His eyes were moist and damp.
It hadn’t seemed real before, just a nebulous concept…a child. It didn’t even
have a heartbeat yet. There were those that argued that true life did not
begin until that very first beat. But seeing that little ball of energy
centered within me, I could not deny the conviction that I carried life.
There’s a little guy or gal growing inside of me, I thought, stunned.
Dante took his hand away, and with the loss of contact our auras disappeared.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I just wanted to see it once. To know it this way. You
have no need to fear me.”
He thought that the stunned look on my face was from fear.
I shook my head. “I’m not afraid. It’s just…the baby suddenly became real to
me just now. How did you do that, make its aura visible?”
“The ring I wear. Here. I want you to have it.” He started to remove it from

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his finger. I stopped him.
“No. Keep it, please.” It looked old and valuable, the ring band crafted from
the same burgundy metal as his wrist bands—the same distinctive bands his
ancestral father Barrabus had worn. They were heirlooms he had somehow managed
to keep from another lifetime, I realized with a shiver.
He mistook my tremor as fear of him rather than as what it really was…fear of
our past. His face closed down and he started to draw away.
I sat up, caught his hand. “Don’t go.”
He stilled, like a bird poised to take flight. “The mood is gone.”
I smiled. “You’re right.” I slid my other hand up his T-shirt, slowly
revealing his sleek, lovely muscles. “Let’s set a new mood, then. Undress for
me.”
With a perception that was new to me, I knew that he needed this moment…we
both did. Another small step toward each other. Another knitting closure in
our healing wound. As much as he needed this memory to take away with him, so
did I.
“Love me,” I whispered.
He did. With gentle touches and blazing eyes, not that eerie phosphorescent
glow but with the shattering intentness of a man about to join his body with a
woman he greatly desired. He ran his mouth over me, down me. Worshipped me
with his touch, his hands, his breath, his long hair that glided over me like
a thousand silky caresses.
The four preceding days of poignant laughter, of fun escape, had laid the
groundwork, and now I was like a flower that had been stroked open by the sun,
unfurling my petals, welcoming his touch.
With simple strokes he readied me. The graze of his fingertips down the side
of my neck. The light brush of his fine-grained beard, rough, over the upper
slopes of my breasts. The snuffling of his warm breath against my belly. The
feel of the cool tip of his nose running down my thigh, raising goosebumps
along the sensitive skin. Laughing softly, he nuzzled his way to the back of
my knees and set his hands upon my feet, pressing deep into my soles with his
strong thumbs. A jolt ran up through me and I caught my breath at the stunning
reminder of that previous time when he had touched me there. The memory of it
blazed between us, burning laughter away. Leaving only humming anticipation in
its place.
He touched me in all places but two…no, three—my lower body where I wept
softly for him, my peaked and aching breasts, and my lips.
“Kiss me.” Yearning for his taste, I tugged at his strong arms, urging him up.
He answered my plea and kissed me. But not where I expected. He kissed me at
the lowest point, where I hungered most for him. His breath fell on me first,
giving me a second’s warning before he delved between my legs. Opening me
wider with his hands, his shoulders, he kissed my soft, glistening folds. I
lay there, shocked, stunned, surprised, until that first, rough-delicate lick
up one side of my nether lips. Then I moaned and spread my legs wider for him.
Arched up as he lapped down the other side. Gave a muffled shriek as he delved
deeper, stroked his tongue into my channel’s wetness. Oh!
It was the worst tease, building me up slowly with devilish licks, teasing
tongue, hot smoky breath. My body jerked and quivered beneath his totally
hedonistic appreciation of me, of my wetness and desire for him. He rumbled
his appreciation against me and the vibration was transmitted from his mouth
to my sensitive, weeping core. I moaned, lifting my hips, twisting harder
against him. He turned his face, stroking the short stubbles of his jaw over
my mound, scraping over my half-hidden pearl, stabbing it with sensation. He
rubbed against me like a purring cat, a brief, spiky caress followed by the
smooth, soothing rub of his soft, silky lips.
“Dante,” I moaned, as he alternately stimulated me then soothed me. And all
the time he did this, his hands touched, pressed, and caressed my feet, giving
me sensation on top of sensation in places I was not used to feeling so
sharply. It was as if his touch, there in those two spots, polarized my entire
body, spreading to my breasts, my womb, my quivering thighs, my throbbing

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lips. His thumbs stroked the arches of my feet, and my body tightened, flexed,
my hips lifting up into him. He purred and rewarded me with a deep,
penetrating stab of his tongue that both filled me and left me aching for
more. For something harder, thicker. Much, much longer.
“Dante.” His name was plea and demand, prayer and affirmation.
“Do you want more?”
“Yes!”
He slid his thumb inside me with a gentle thrust, and I gasped. Moaned as he
withdrew it, pushed it back in again like a little miniature penis. Both of us
watched as that single digit slid inside me, the fat head disappearing, the
slender stalk swallowed up. Then watched it come back out in reverse, wet and
slick with my dewy desire.
Both the feeling of what he was doing with his thumb—again nice, but like a
tiny, teasing appetizer, not the main course—and the fact that he was watching
it so raptly as he exercised that deliberate, slow, in-and-out fucking
movement…tightened me, inside and out, swelling my desire, and brought light
to my skin, beginning its incandescent glow.
His lips and cheeks were smeared wet from my intimate fluid. I could see my
essence coating him, could smell myself on him, and the light within me flared
even brighter.
His eyes lifted, spearing me with his hot gaze, with the knowledge and
awareness in them—that my legs were splayed wide, my body open to him, lifted
up like a flower opening to the sun, welcoming his warm, stroking attention.
He rotated his hand, shifting the angle so that his thumb pushed against,
instead of with my body’s natural pathway, stretching the thinner posterior
wall, flooding me with sudden, new, unexpected sensation. I bit back a cry,
unable to help the involuntary squeezing down of my walls against that
penetrating thumb that I suddenly felt with incredible sensitivity as it
plowed a slightly different path inside of me.
“Touch yourself. Stroke your breasts for me,” he murmured in a soft, gentle
voice that was so completely at odds with the fierce shine of his eyes.
Everything about him was like that. Gentle but intense. His angled-back thumb
dipping in and out of me, his knowing gaze. His awareness of how hard it was
for me to do as he asked. Touch yourself for me. Give yourself to me that way.
My hands shook as they lifted up, my head falling back, my eyes closing as I
did as he asked me to do. As I touched myself while he watched me do it.
Closing my eyes made it worse instead of better, because I could feel
everything more that way. His watching eyes. My cool hands as I stroked the
soft, curving slopes of my breasts, brushed over my turgid nipples. As I
cupped myself and squeezed as if it were his hands stroking over me. That was
how I touched myself. Imagining it as his hands, not mine. His hands that
circled my pebbled, pouting crests. That thumbed over them. Brushed over the
sensitive nubs. Pinched the hardening peaks.
Pleasure rolled deliciously over me, and I opened my eyes. Looked at him.
“Like this?” I murmured.
His voice, when he answered, was hoarse and thick, his eyes gone a smoky gray,
as if clouds had swarmed across the sky. “Yes, like that.”
I smiled at his answer, at his reaction. And what had first been awkward now
became easy. It was as if the hands that were touching me were touching him
also. Teasing, caressing. Soothing, tantalizing.
I circled my nipples with forefinger and thumb. Squeezed.
I bit my lips, tightening inside around his thumb. Held it for a moment in my
tight, greedy grasp before it slipped from me, then pushed back in. I groaned
and opened my eyes to find his eyes locked on the rosy red tips of my nipples,
engorged and lengthened from my pinching caress.
I ran my fingertips around the flushed areolas, smiling like a game show
hostess drawing graceful attention to a waiting prize. Yours if you gave the
right answer.
“Or like this?” I asked, my voice sultry, low, like Eve offering up forbidden
fruit to Adam. With slow seduction, I put my finger and thumb back around the

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hard little peaks and squeezed my nipples again with another slow, rolling
moan, another delicious tightening of my body around his pumping thumb.
I pulled, tugging on those swollen tips for two long seconds, pulling them
out. Then my fingers cupped and framed what I had wrought—my nipples flushed
cherry red, fully elongated, jutting out like little fingers.
With a hungry growl, like a beast teased past what he would resist, he tore
open his pants and swarmed up my body, latching onto a jutting nipple with his
warm, wet mouth, sucking on it hungrily while his left hand covered my other
breast in a frank claiming. Mine! that hand proclaimed as he wrapped his
fingers around the turgid tip and squeezed with firm, possessive pressure.
I cried out and arched against his sucking mouth, his torturing hand, my legs
bending up around his waist. His other hand slid beneath my bottom, grasped my
cheek and lifted me, grinding my mound up against his hard sternum. The angle
of it was just right, catching my swollen pearl in the place of greatest
friction. His teeth scraped over my nipple, capturing it with the dull-sharp
edges of his teeth, pulling on it. Simultaneously squeezing and tugging on the
other tip with his clever fingers. One more stimulus added…the unexpected
graze of his fingertips there along my anal pucker…and I climaxed. It rolled
sharply, suddenly over me like a huge, cresting wave, sweeping over me,
drowning me in shaking ripples, in tearing, convulsive sensation. My light and
my pleasure spilled out from me like the sun bursting apart.
After the giant peak had passed, he slipped into me while I was yet shuddering
in the helpless, quivering aftermath. As my light dimmed, his began to glow.
It was like one of the most natural things in the world, that my ebbing spark
of light would beget his.
He was so gentle, staying so still inside of me. As if he knew my sensitized
nerves could not take any more sensation at that moment other than the slow,
stretching slide of his hardness in my softness. Just his filling length where
I craved him most. Where I held him deep inside me, my inner ripples stroking
him like a squeezing hand.
There in that frozen moment, he was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever
seen. Poised above me with effortless, waiting strength as I felt him throb
deep inside me. The strong cut of his muscles lovingly defined. The sweeping
breadth of his shoulders. The curve of his biceps and more streamlined
triceps. The gentle swell of his chest. His sloping deltoids, starkly
delineated. Ready strength gathered, held in abeyance, calm for the moment
like storm clouds slowly gathering on the horizon, biding their time to
unleash their torrent at just the right moment. That same waiting gentleness
of how he had slid into me. Thinking about it, remembering the feel of it,
that gentle friction, stirred me from my post-coital languor.
I gazed up at him through half-closed eyes and felt my body tighten once more
at just the sight of him. The divine illumination of his skin against the
fading glow of mine. He looked like an angel with his honey-brown hair
spilling in a loose, wild tangle around his face, framing those fierce eyes in
softness. He reminded me not of a playful cherub, but of a warrior angel. A
ferocious beauty that took my breath away.
Holding my eyes, he began a gentle, graceful dance with his body. Slow,
poignant movements rocking in and out of me. Poignant because his face, his
eyes, the coiled energy emanating from him in invisible waves that you could
feel…all spoke of the fact that he was not normally a gentle man. But he was
gentle now, for me, with me, inside of me. Slow, languid strokes made even
more erotic because of the unexpected pleasure of it. Like expecting a storm
to strike with fierce, pounding fury, and finding sweet, gentle rain kissing
your skin instead. That restraint, that containment of all that he could have
unleashed, made me moan.
I lifted my heavy arms and legs, wrapped them around my gentle lover, and drew
him down to me. He kissed me, the lightest touch, as he stroked within me in
that soft and easy way, his rhythm never changing, as if he were savoring the
feel of it, the sweet intimacy of our joining. I savored him in turn, without
demand, just appreciation, my hands gliding over his shoulders, down his back,

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stroking the muscles there that flexed and moved as he moved slowly, gently.
My hands swept lower, reading him, feeling the tight clenching of his buttocks
as he pushed into me, the easing of those muscles as he pulled back out.
The movement of his body above me was like lapping waves, ever constant. Even
when I arched up into him, my skin brightening anew, asking for more, he kept
to that maddeningly slow pace, that languid rhythm.
He spoke to me then, telling me how he felt, what he wanted to do to me, what
he was doing to me. Coarse love words. And the rough frankness of the words he
used was in such marked contrast with his movements, to the gentleness with
which he made love to me. The dichotomy of it stirred my mind, my body, wound
me even higher without a single alteration in rhythm.
He touched me no other way, just the turgid length of him in that maddeningly
slow and intimate dance, graceful, beautiful, ever gentle. The light brush of
his lips over my lips, my cheeks, across my eyes, feathering down my temples.
The lightest brush of my nipples against his chest as he dipped and swayed
above me, into me and out of me. The rough stroke of his words against my
ears—gritty, male, shockingly explicit. Words that excited me, made me
tremble, made me moan.
He stroked me slowly, sweetly, brought me once more to the edge that way,
nothing more. Kept me trembling there on the brink for so long that it became
like agony and ecstasy combined. Wanting and having. But not enough, not
enough.
“Dante.” I said his name over and over again feverishly. My body lifted into
his, but he held me in his rhythm with a restraining hand upon my hip, not
allowing a faster beat. When I tried for more, he stopped and stared down at
me with those fierce, glittering eyes, withholding his body until I yielded
once more to that gentle, maddening stroking. He was deaf to my cries for
“harder, faster, more,” delivered first as a command, then as a plea. Nothing
moved him from that torturing slow and easy pace. Not his tight, straining
body. Not my inner clenching, my weeping need for him. Honey poured out of me.
So wet was I that you heard the slurping sounds we made as he slipped in and
out of me.
I finally surrendered and lay quiescent beneath him, just accepting his easy
thrusts, what he chose to give me, with silent tears rolling down my cheeks
with the pleasure and frustration he had built up in me. He lapped up the
spilled wetness with tender strokes of his tongue.
“Dulcaeta”—beloved—“don’t cry.”
The endearment only made more tears flow.
“Please,” I begged. Nothing else. Just that plea.
Looking down into my eyes, he gave a shuddering sigh.
“Thank you for this time. For this sweet gift,” he said. He didn’t alter the
force or speed of his rhythm. But his hand slid beneath my thighs and I felt
his fingers stroke my wet outer lips, probe over where he stretched me,
penetrated me. He traced that sensitive, swollen tissue back to where it
rucked up tight and became perineal tissue, and his touch there was even more
sensitive, disturbing. My breath hitched, and my body clenched around his
shaft as he grazed a fingertip around my back opening.
With eyes both tender and fierce, his voice gentle and rough, he said, “Come
for me,” and pressed down, sliding that moistened fingertip into me,
penetrating me as his cock withdrew and stroked back into my sheath, easy,
gentle.
“Come for me,” he demanded. And I did. With crying blessed relief, I finally
came. A rippling tremor that seized him, squeezed him so tightly inside me. A
release that broke gently over me like the wash of calm waters against the
still shore. A sweet convulsing easing that went on and on until I felt it
trigger his.
Like the wash and play of our light—my shine dimming as his brightened—so did
his release begin as mine ended. Extending it until it felt like one endless,
gentle liberation. A letting go.
A rippling, shuddering, cleansing of the senses, washing us anew.

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NINETEEN

WHEN DAYLIGHT CAME, it was with the thought of him, the lingering taste and
feel of him as I lay there in my bed. He had imprinted himself on my body, in
my mind. He’d been saying good-bye. And that had felt wrong…because I wanted
him to stay.
Yes. A simple truth. I didn’t want him to go.
I’ll tell him, I thought. I’ll tell him tonight that I want him to stay.
It was that thought that finally soothed me to sleep. And then I dreamed.
I remembered.

A MAN WAS inside of me and I was riding him with vigorous abandon as he
sweated and glowed and moaned beneath me. He was on his back, chained to a
bench, his hands and ankles restrained by silver shackles. It was Shel, the
warrior cut down by Barrabus’s sword in my last remembered dream, saved from
death only at my intervention. He had whip marks reddening his chest, his
thighs. Some had cut through the skin, drawing blood. They were marks that I
had deliberately inflicted on him, I came to realize with some shock. Not in
punishment, but in love play.
We were inside a dark room lit by torchlight. A dungeon, I would have thought,
with all the whips, crops, floggers, and chains along the wall, on the floor.
But the bolted benches and the various wooden frames were padded, the chains
lined with fleece. And Shel’s moans were not those of pain but of ecstatic
rapture.
Not a dungeon. A playroom, I realized.
My playroom.
I plunged down on top of him and felt his shaft, a huge, hard thing, slide
into me. Beneath that I felt the pleasurable bite of leather straps. Without
looking down, I knew that what I felt was a cock and ball harness secured
tightly around Shel, making his phallus almost painfully hard and engorged,
swollen to a very large size. The straps separating his balls lifted them into
tight sacs. The sensation, I knew, was much more acute for him this way. When
I next thrust myself down on him, I ground a bit against those stretched
balls, and felt a powerful wave of energy spill from him along with his
agonized cry of pleasure caused by the torturous pain.
“My Queen!” he cried. All the muscles of his body were strained tight as I
rode him that way for a few more strokes. His hips were strapped down so he
couldn’t move, only I could, and I knew that the sense of helplessness
devastated him even more.
“Don’t come,” I ordered, my voice cool and calm, utterly confident in the
authority I wielded over the man I was fucking.
I shifted the angle forward, easing off his balls, and savored the feel of his
penis sinking into me in that new position. Goddess, he was like rigid metal,
so hard he was. The tightness of the bindings was such that his erection had
to be almost uncomfortably hard by now, a discomfort that caused him to become
even more erect. A vicious cycle of pain causing pleasure causing more pain.
It was a delicate, deliberate dance, mingling pleasure with pain, and I did it
effortlessly, keeping Shel there at that razor’s edge, my fingers stroking
lightly, lovingly, over the raw wounds I had inflicted, pulling an almost
frenzied groan from him. His body was twitching now with shudders.
“Mistress, please…I can’t hold back—”
“You can. And you will. Or you will displease me greatly.”
I don’t know what disturbed me more. Hearing that cool, dispassionate voice.
Or seeing the utter control I wielded so ruthlessly, so knowingly, like a
priestess serving up pleasure bleeding on the altar of pain.
I watched Mona Lyra give in to her own pleasure then, throwing back her head
and closing her eyes, enjoying the hard, swollen shaft she rode with

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increasing rhythm and almost fierce force, glowing with the moon’s light.
Utterly sure that Shel would obey her. It was odd thinking what she thought,
feeling what she did. Seeing that gloriously, sexually dominant creature
dancing with such abandon upon the man she ruthlessly used and pleasured.
Seeing her as me…a much different me. I felt what she felt…the tightening
pleasure, the bitter-sweet taste of coming ecstasy, heightened and sweetened
by the control she wielded as her right. She was lost in abandon and utterly
aware at the same time of the straining man beneath her, throbbing within her.
Who grew even more excited, I saw, by her seemingly callous use of him.
When both their lights were blindingly bright, so bright they made the
torchlight seem but a dim glow, she opened her eyes and looked down at him.
Through her eyes, I saw Shel’s light brown eyes darken until they were almost
black, glazed with pleasure that was filled with the sweet bite of desperate
pain, his face and body so strained they was literally twitching with
tremors—a man brought sublimely to the point of breaking pleasure. He was like
a man clinging to the edge of a cliff by just his fingertips, feeling the
ground start to crumble beneath them and desperately fighting to hold on just
a little bit longer, one more second, even as he felt himself begin to fall.
Then and only then did I finally release him. Release us both.
“Come now,” I commanded.
With tears in his eyes, his lips bloodied from where he had bit down on them
in his frantic struggle to hold back the trembling tide of his release, he did
with a harsh cry that filled the room. He came in a great shuddering, spilling
tide inside of me, his hips bucking up into me as much as the restraints
allowed as he convulsed almost violently, spurting, ejaculating into me.
Shel’s release lifted me into my mine, and I felt it roar through me, a
whitewash of ecstasy that ripped through my body, arching me above him so
terribly tight for one powerful, blissful moment.
It was then, when we were both caught up in our body’s rapture, helpless in
its throes, that I sensed something wrong. Too late.
A blade swept down, and with one clean slice, Shel’s head parted from his
body. He died even while he was still inside of me, filling my womb with his
seed. Light flashed—his energy, his life force being released.
His body, his solid flesh, crumbled into ashes. And just like that he was
gone. I fell onto the bench, heard the clink of empty chains hitting the
ground, saw the cock harness tumble down. And I screamed. With rage, with
fury, with sorrow.
“Noooo!” It was an anguished cry torn from my soul. Then more quietly, more
mournfully, “Oh Goddess…Shel.”
Still shaking with the ripples of release, I looked up into the face of the
enemy who had breached my fortress silently. Undetected until he took sudden
form and substance before me now.
I’d never seen him before, and yet his face was familiar to me…to Mona Lyra.
He stood before me like an avenging angel, the edge of his sword biting into
my neck, drawing a slow trickle of blood. His face was like stone.
Dispassionate, some would have said, but only if they could not see his eyes.
His eyes were of the palest blue, like a glacier lake, and just as cold. Ghost
eyes. Deadly and merciless. Around his neck he wore a glowing amulet, a
brilliant orange stone speckled with black. On his wrists glimmered dark red
warrior bands, ones I had seen before. I knew then who he was and why he
appeared so familiar. I’d killed his father almost ten years before.
“No one can hear us,” he said, making me wonder at the unusual magic he
wielded. “Do you know who I am?”
I looked into those eyes. Felt the merciless impact of them. “You are Damian,
Barrabus’s son. Wounded in battle and then gone. Everyone thought you dead.”
For good reason. The battlefield had been coated inches thick with blood and
ashes.
“I would not allow myself to die. Not while you yet lived.” He spoke coolly,
almost impassively, but his light blue eyes glowed with a dangerous, burning
heat, flashing almost the color of silver, our greatest weakness. It was as if

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he touched that metal alloy to my skin when he looked at me with those
blindingly bright eyes. I found myself unable to move, to strike out at him,
my body chained by invisible bonds.
“Are you a demon?” I asked as fear trailed its chilly fingers down my spine. I
knew of nothing else that could have ensorcelled me like this. That had this
degree of mental strength, holding me helpless beneath his gaze.
A small smile touched his lips, a feral gesture somehow. “Not yet.”
“You didn’t need to kill Shel.”
“Do you mourn him? Feel pain at his loss?”
“Yes.”
“Good!” The word exploded viciously out from him; and his body trembled with
his fierce anger and satisfaction. His slight movement cut the sword deeper
into my neck, the blade a cool silver burning in my flesh. “I want to give you
as much pain as you gave me when you killed my father, and then my mother,
too, for she ended her life the next day when she learned of his death. I want
you to ache, to hurt…if it is even possible for an icy bitch like you to
feel.”
“I feel,” I said with the heat of tears stinging my eyes.
“I hope you do. By the holy fire of Hell, I hope you do.” Shaking, as if it
took everything in him to do so, he withdrew his sword. Then with a casual
strength that was even more frightening because I was helpless to move or
fight against him, he lowered me to my back and secured my arms, wrists, and
legs to the bench with the silver restraints. On top of that, he chained me
with his will, a mental command my muscles were unable to disobey.
“Stay like this until I return for you.”
I could not move. Not one single muscle of my body. I could only speak, and
the dread that welled up within me spilled out into my voice. “Where are you
going?”
He lowered his face down to me like a lover. Spoke to me in the soft,
whispering tones of one. “To kill all who belong to you here in this castle.
Your men, your women.”
Everything in me shouted no. I gathered everything I could to break free.
Called upon the abundant power that had always been innate—and found myself
utterly helpless.
With my eyes wild upon his implacable face, I drew on my last reserve, upon
the pearly moles in my palm, the Goddess’s visible favor upon me. With blessed
relief, I felt them begin to tingle, to answer my call.
His sword came swinging down in a graceful arc. One cut with almost negligent
force. I felt the reverberation of the blade bite into the wooden bench as my
severed hands fell to the ground in a spurting fountain of blood, chopped off
just above the manacles. The metal restraints fell to the ground with a heavy
clunk, still attached to my dismembered limbs.
I didn’t scream. Not aloud. Just in my mind. A scream that went on and on and
on interminably. I opened my mouth and words spilled out. “I beg of you, don’t
kill them. Do what you will with me, but my people are innocent.”
He looked down at me, his eyes pale burning flames. “No one in this war is
innocent,” he said in a gentle tone.
Panic choked my voice, fear twisting it ruthlessly. “Your father…your father
was honorable. He would not have slain innocents.”
“I am not my father.”
“Don’t. Please, don’t. Just me,” I begged with tears spilling down my face.
With my blood spreading like an echoing sea of sorrow around me.
“Vengeance is mine, and it is terrible. Hush.” And with that soft-spoken
command, I could no longer speak. Could only scream in my mind as I watched
him turn and walk out the door, go up the stairs. A moment of terrible
silence, and the screams began. The cries of horror, the shrieks of pain that
echoed and rang in the fortress. Cries that filled my mind and did not stop,
even when all sound faded away and all heartbeats ended until I heard only
mine and that of one other. His.
When he finally returned, I was light-headed and weak from blood loss, and

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from the pain that consumed my body, ravaged my heart, my soul. He released me
from his mental control, freed my legs of the silver shackles. And a sick,
almost mindless fury filled me. Swelled me with a hate so strong that it
possessed me, expanding within me with a terrible, powerful pressure, even as
I lay there physically helpless before him.
“I curse you,” I said in a voice that was mine and not mine. In a voice that
was deeper, more resonant, filled with a power that came not from me alone,
but was channeled through my Goddess’s Tears. They glowed from my amputated
hands. “I curse you to a life that will never end. To deaths that are not true
deaths. You will live again and again to die unceasingly, returning to an
ever-diminishing seed until only you alone remain. May your soul be cursed in
endless torment for what you have done today.”
“It already is,” Damian, the son of Barrabus, said. He raised his sword. “Know
this before you go, witch Queen. I will lay waste to all that you hold dear.
Anything and everything that you ever loved, I will destroy.” And with that
last promise, the sword, drenched red with my blood, my people’s blood, came
swinging down…

I AWOKE WITH a scream. With tears streaming down my face, sobs choking my
chest. Arms held me, and I viciously fought against them.
“It’s a dream. Just a dream, Mona Lisa.”
My name and a face—Dontaine’s—brought me to startling awareness of him and all
the others who had come running at my cry: Thaddeus, the worried faces of
Jamie and Tersa, Rosemary, Chami, Aquila, and Tomas. Everyone in the
household.
“Oh God,” I whispered. My people now, I thought, while the shrilling screams
of my dead and dying people from the past echoed in my mind.
“You had a nightmare,” Dontaine soothed.
No, not a nightmare, I thought. Something much worse than that.
Memory.

TWENTY

I REMEMBERED HOW I died.
But it was the other memory, the memory of how all my people had died, that
utterly devastated me. And the memory of the tool of their destruction.
Damian…and myself.
Dante came to me as he had come all the nights before at the gloaming of the
day. I studied him as he entered the sitting room where I had sat and waited
for him for over two long hours, and gazed at him with memories both old and
new. I saw him as he was now—young, easy, relaxed. Happy, even. And over that
reality, I saw the monster in my dreams, the cold, burning eyes, the merciless
face. I saw the bloody swing of the sword, heard the shrieks, the wails of my
people as they died. It was as if ghostly images of the past clung and
superimposed themselves over the slimmer body and younger face of the man
before me.
I had not known that the curse Dante bore had come from me.
I’d cursed him. And I wondered if I had cursed myself as well. You could not
invoke such a thing without some of it coming back upon yourself.
I searched that face, looking for evil. But could not find it in him unless I
saw it in myself also. He had killed, as I had killed. Sought vengeance, as I
had sought vengeance in the end. We had simply used different means. Was his
choice any better or worse than mine? I did not know. Both things that we had
done were horrendous. I could see that, understand that in my mind. I’d
reached that fair and logical conclusion after two hours of careful thought,
deciding how to proceed. But my body was less logically governed. Coldness
pervaded my body when he stepped through the door, and an almost wild,
wrenching fear seized me. It was a reaction not governed by reason or will.

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A riptide of primitive instinct sent my control splintering away, and I
overset my chair, sent it crashing to the floor as I hastily stood and backed
away from him like a wild animal trapped.
He stopped. Froze still. And that easy, happy light that had filled his eyes
upon seeing me died away. All the warmth seeped out, leaving his eyes like
pale, glimmering ice.
Seconds ticked by. A long, suspended moment of silence and ghosts, of life and
death and everlasting rebirth.
“You remembered,” he said. Two words that sounded the death knell of
everything that might have been.
I nodded, feeling everything I had resolved die away beneath the primitive
scream of horror and rage, of sorrow and pain choking my throat, trying to
claw its way out of me.
I could not forgive. I could not forget.
I could not bear to be in his presence.
My body was equally torn between fleeing him, and attacking him. Tearing him
apart.
Something closed in him like the audible shutting of a door. His eyes dropped
away from mine, and his head lowered.
“We go to High Queen’s Court tomorrow,” he said in a low, quiet voice. “Can
you bear my presence for one more day, or would you have me leave now?”
He was asking whether I was banishing him as a rogue, or if I would allow him
to re-enter our society legitimately. Asking as if it did not really matter to
him what I chose to do.
Now. I want you gone now! my body screamed. But the words that came out of my
mouth in a hoarse, strained whisper were, “Tomorrow. You can stay until
tomorrow.”
He bowed and left.
For a long time afterward my body continued to tremble.

THE NEXT NIGHT we went to High Court. The private jet took us there swiftly. I
knew that logically, but those several hours locked together with Dante in the
plane seemed endlessly long. When we landed, I practically leaped outside.
Only when in the open space was I able to feel calmer.
We were settled now in the suite of rooms at the manor house that I had come
to think of as mine. The Morells had been given guest rooms on another floor
as per my request. An unusual request that Mathias, steward of the Great
House, had complied with without a flicker of expression, although his eyes
had widened a bit when he had first caught sight of Nolan and Hannah. By his
reaction, I knew that he recognized them.
Other Queens and their entourages had arrived, many whom I’d never seen
before. It was a full house, I noticed, as we entered the dining hall, which
seemed to be the main gathering spot for now, at least until High Court
convened in the next hour. I’d brought all of my men but for Chami, who I had
asked to stay behind to watch over Thaddeus, Tersa, and Jamie—my Mixed Blood
flock—and Rosemary. Eyes glanced curiously at me, but it was the powerful
giant beside me who drew the most attention, the most stares. Amber, my
Warrior Lord.
It was not just the gold medallion necklace Amber wore that proclaimed his
elevated status, but the feel of his power alone. A power unmatched by any
other warrior in that room. Not by Aquila or Tomas, my senior warriors. Not
even by Dontaine. It was only now, in comparison to the other Queens’ guards
who filled the room that I could see what others saw: that I commanded the
strongest warriors here. My men’s collective strength gleamed around me like
bright gemstones, sparkling more vividly than any force the other Queens had.
And shining most brightly was Amber, like a raw diamond that had been chiseled
free of all flaws and weaknesses, so that every facet of him gleamed now with
unhidden radiance.
He was different than before, more confident. Grown into his power and
authority. He wore it now with assurance and ease, a strong man with nothing

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to prove. With no fear that his greater strength would mark him for death by
his Queen.
He was so much stronger now. Not in degree of power, that was unchanged, but
with the quiet command he wielded. Two of his guards stood by his side, and
two virgin lads. They were all technically from my territory, but they were
really his, boys who had chosen to train under him. The two eighteen-year-old
boys had come to seek service with other Queens. To give up their prized
virginity to their new mistresses.
I’d worried for nothing, I understood now as we were seated at a table long
enough to accommodate us all. I’d worried about Amber’s vulnerability, the
tainted legacy left him by his infamous rogue father, and the fear and
mistrust by the other Queens that would always be there against him because of
that. But vulnerability came from inside a person. You were susceptible to
hurt only if you cared what others thought of you. Amber didn’t. The only
Queen’s opinion that mattered to him was mine, and he was secure in that. He
was armored by the mantle of his own authority and by my trust in him. It was
a rich, unknowing gift he had given to me, seeing him like this—proud and
invincible to the poisonous arrows of others because of my love.
All those long, lonely nights spent apart from him were a worthwhile
sacrifice, to see him like this now.
The Morells entered the dining hall, and all eyes turned to them. To the tall,
bearded warrior and his healer wife that many had thought dead and departed.
And to the two additions to their family—their sons, Dante and Quentin.
Here, where I had not expected it, was vulnerability.
The dining hall was a mass of patterned colors, each guard wearing the
individual dress uniform of his Queen’s court. My table’s livery was gold and
ivory, set against black trim. Sitting around me, my men were like an array of
golden petals set around my black-gowned center.
Nolan, Hannah, and their sons wore simple clothing. There were no uniform
colors declaring to whom they belonged. There had been no time, and no need
perhaps, to have custom livery designed for them. They could have worn clothes
that bore my Court’s colors, but they hadn’t. Probably a deliberate and
cautious choice after I had requested separate quarters for them. They didn’t
know if I had I brought them here and washed my hands of them already. I had
left them awash in a sea of uncertainty, and as a result, they were vulnerable
now in this period of transition. As they paused at the threshold, all eyes in
the room watched to see at which Queen’s table they would sit. To see who, if
anyone, protected them.
Nolan glanced in my direction, but with no acknowledging nod from me, no
indication of what I wished, he began leading his family toward a table set in
the opposite corner of the hall, farthest away from me.
A part of me wanted them to go there. To have Dante far, far away from me.
Another part of me screamed that until they pledged themselves elsewhere, they
were still under my care and protection.
The latter voice won.
“Join us.” My words were spoken softly. But they were easily heard by Nolan.
With a grateful look in his eyes, he changed direction and headed toward us.
“You are mistaken, Nolan. It is my table where you belong, is it not?”
The voice was a low, smooth, feminine one belonging to a Queen I was not
familiar with. A tall brunette with blond-streaked hair. Not the natural kind
that came from sun and surf. With the Monère’s sun sensitivity, that would be
very unlikely. No, these blond highlights had to have come from a bottle, from
the human magic of a beauty salon. She sat in a corner table surrounded by six
of her men dressed in forest green and yellow saffron. She wore the
traditional long black gown of a Queen, but again, a human touch here—it was
couture. One that had a label like Versace, or something of that ilk. She was
a handsome woman with lovely blue eyes set in a strong, proud face. The only
thing marring her features were her lips. They were too thin, making her mouth
a tight, straight line, indicating a rigid, cruel nature or a parsimonious
one. I’d be willing to bet it was both, that she was a greedy covetous thing,

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and not too nice on top of that.
From the look of ownership in her eyes as she gazed at Nolan and his family,
and the sudden tension in Nolan’s and Hannah’s shoulders, I had a feeling that
I was looking at their old Queen. The one who had not allowed them to marry.
The one for whom they had faked their deaths in order to flee.
“No, milady,” Nolan said quietly, continuing to guide his sons and wife to me.
“We are sworn to Mona Lisa’s service now.”
“No, Nolan?” she said with a dangerous gentleness. “That is not a word that
Mona Sephina’s men ever say to her.”
Sheesh. A Queen who referred to herself in the third person. I guess you could
add “huge ego” to rigid, cruel, and greedy.
Her voice changed. Became hard and whiplike. “You are mine! I have not
released you from my service.”
It would have, of course, been impossible for things to go so smoothly for me.
To think that just once I could come to High Court and not cause an uproar. I
sighed and deliberately stepped over the line that would make this Queen my
enemy.
“No,” I said, deliberately stressing the word that Mona Sephina’s men never
said to her. Poor schmucks. “They fled you and became rogues. Which means you
lost what once belonged to you. Too bad, so sad. But,” I shrugged, “that’s our
law.” Mentally, I patted myself on the back for saying our law, and not your
law. See? I was getting better. “I found them,” I continued, “and now they are
mine. Willingly,” I added, unable to help adding that last twist of the knife.
My words stabbed her dead on. She rose to her feet with fury. Let me tell you,
that gal had a lot of inches on her. She must have stood at least six two.
Taller even than Rosemary, my Amazon cook, although maybe only half her girth.
Still, she was a formidable thing, solidly built, almost half a foot taller
than me, and outweighing me by at least fifty pounds. And the way she held
herself bespoke of a confidence that had me thinking this Queen might really
know how to handle herself in a fight. Gee, I really knew how to pick ’em.
“Thank you for reminding me of our laws,” Mona Sephina said, suddenly smiling
like a cat that had just gulped down an unsuspecting canary. Nolan and Hannah
froze, caught halfway between the two Queens squabbling over them.
Mona Sephina’s eyes slid from the parents to focus on the children. And the
acquisitive light that shone in those blue eyes as she looked over Dante and
Quentin like something that already belonged to her made my stomach clench
with foreboding.
“You are right,” she said. “Once they went rogue, I lost all rights to my
former master at arms…” Somehow, I wasn’t surprised at hearing Nolan’s
previous rank. “…and to my healer. But not to the children they conceived
while still under my rule.”
“That law applies to simple bondwomen sworn to your service,” Hannah said,
speaking up in her children’s defense. “It does not apply to healers. We have
more rights. Our children belong to us.”
“Unless you cast aside those rights and turn rogue,” Mona Sephina said.
Vicious satisfaction layered her words. “Then all your special rights are
naught. Your sons belong to me. You two boys, come here.”
“No,” I said. I was deriving more and more satisfaction in saying that word to
her. I was pretty vague on most areas of Monère law. I just knew what the
others told me and what I picked up, as in now. But it couldn’t be much
different from human law, I reasoned. Open, as such, to any interpretation you
could throw in and get away with.
“Not so fast,” I drawled in a fashion that would have made Clint Eastwood
proud, lounging back in my seat as relaxed as Mona Sephina was rigid. “They
are no longer rogues. They belong to me now, remember?” I watched with
satisfaction as a muscle twitched beneath Mona Sephina’s eye. “As such,
Hannah’s rights as a healer still hold. Her children are hers.”
“I dispute that,” Mona Sephina said. And something about the way she said it,
throwing it down like a gauntlet, made it seem more significant than the mere
words themselves. And, of course, it was—my intuition was good about things

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like that. Not in other matters, like loving and trusting someone who had
freakin’ killed me in another life and slaughtered all my people. But in
things like this, it was dead-on accurate.
An expectant hush fell over our dining hall audience, a collective breath held
as if they were waiting for something more.
“I challenge your claim,” Mona Sephina said, and the tense, waiting stillness
dissolved with an almost audible sigh.
“What does that mean?” My question was aimed at Amber, sitting beside me. He
and all my men had gone deeply still.
“In matters where the law is not entirely clear, a dispute can be settled by
issuing a personal challenge.”
“You mean, like where might is right, winner takes all? She wants to fight
me?”
Amber nodded.
“There is no need.” It was Dante who spoke, as I had somehow known he would.
Of all the men here, even more than my own men, he would not want me fighting
another Queen—not when I might be carrying his child.
He addressed Mona Sephina courteously. “Withdraw the challenge, milady, and my
brother and I am yours. You need not fight to win us.”
Mona Sephina studied Dante and Quentin for a moment, savoring the pain in
their parents’ eyes. Smiling triumphantly, she nodded. “Very well. I withdraw
the challenge. Come to me now.”
Dante did as she bid. Quentin followed him.
As they walked to her, I told myself that they were doing nothing more than
what they had come here to do—to find another Queen to serve. But the agony in
Nolan’s and Hannah’s eyes, and the delight in Mona Sephina’s over their
suffering, was just wrong.
Another Queen…any other Queen. Just not her.
“Wait,” I said, and Dante and Quentin halted, instinctively obeying me because
in their hearts they still belonged to me. “I cannot agree to these terms.”
Would not agree to them. I looked to Nolan, the only one of my men of whom I
dared ask this because of his right as their father. “Can someone else accept
the challenge on my behalf?”
“Yes,” Nolan answered. His eyes held understanding of what I was asking of
him, and agreement to it. “If a Queen chooses a champion, he can fight in her
stead. It would be my honor to serve as your champion, my Queen.”
“I choose you then, Nolan. Thank you.”
“Touching,” Mona Sephina said with a sneer. “But I have already withdrawn the
challenge. The boys are mine,” she said and smiled slowly. “Of their own free
will.”
“I dispute that,” I said. And calmly threw down the gauntlet. “I issue you a
challenge in turn for them.”
She smiled coldly at me. “You do not know our laws well, do you? I am not
obliged to accept your challenge. Only a fool would do so, and I am not a
fool, despite what you may believe. Nolan was my best warrior. I have none who
could defeat him.” She snapped her fingers at Dante and Quentin. “Come, as I
command of you.”
They started forward again. And again I stopped them with one word. “Wait.”
There had to be something else, some other way. Power was only what you
allowed someone to wield over you. I would not allow her to hold it over me or
any of my people.
“We are at an impasse, Mona Sephina. I claim them, and so do you. I issue you
challenge, and you cravenly decline it.” She stiffened at my words. “I would
say that leaves both of us with an equal balance of nothing. Dante and Quentin
have come here to seek service with another Queen at the fair. If we both
yield our claim to them, I will uphold that original intent. At the service
fair, I will bow out gracefully, and leave you with a clear shot at obtaining
them then. Only then.”
“You try to grant me a right I have no need of,” Mona Sephina said coolly,
“when they are mine already.”

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“We are at a stalemate then.”
“No, we are not.” Mona Sephina turned to Dante. “I withdrew the challenge as
you asked me to. Honor your word to me now, boy.”
Face stiff, he began moving toward her once more.
I stood, scraping back my chair. “Take one more step, Dante, and I will engage
Mona Sephina in a fight over you right now, challenge or no challenge.”
Dante drew to a halt, his jaw set in a hard, grim line as he turned back to
stare at me with a look in his eyes that clearly said: If I could get my hands
on you right now, you would not forget it anytime soon. I thought you wanted
me gone. Are you crazy?
Maybe I was. If so, it was entirely his fault for getting me pregnant. All
those hormones.
My gaze swung back to Mona Sephina and I watched as her eyes narrowed into
slits. She looked like a big cat that was considering pouncing and seizing her
two young prizes, only a short reach away. Her men were tense and ready beside
her. I felt my own men gathering themselves for the fight about to erupt.
“What if I serve as Mona Lisa’s champion?” Dante said into the sudden tense
stalemate.
I saw Mona Sephina pause and consider it. He was young, only twenty years old,
and the feel of his power was much less than that of her guards, all seasoned
warriors. “I will accept those terms,” Mona Sephina said, nodding abruptly.
“If she does.”
“Who will you choose as your champion?” I asked, not knowing why I did so. It
would be the strongest of her men, of course, the one standing on her right.
He was almost the same height as his Queen, but built like a massive bull.
Power oozed from him like invisible heat.
“My champion will be Oswald.”
Sure enough, the warrior I had eyeballed stepped forward. I glanced from Dante
to Oswald, and back again. Distinguished bloodline or not, reincarnated
warrior who had lived countless lifetimes before notwithstanding, Dante still
looked like a young pup next to the big warrior he would face.
“Mona Lisa,” Dante said softly, reading the resistance in my face. “It is my
choice.”
His choice. His right to fight for his freedom and that of his brother’s.
Although freedom was a poor word choice. More like the free will to choose
which Queen they would bind themselves to in servitude. Yeah, that truth
sounded so much better.
Was it worth it, this fight over something that may or may not matter much in
the end?
I looked at Mona Sephina’s thin lips, her cruel eyes, and thought: Hell, yeah.
It was worth it.

TWENTY-ONE

WE ENDED UP bickering some more before finally coming to terms we both agreed
upon. Dante had proposed archery, shooting at targets. His opponent, Oswald,
had snorted, and proceeded to tell us what he thought of such a bloodless
sport.
He got to choose the terms of the fight, Oswald insisted, since I had issued
the challenge.
We all had to take a moment to rehash the events—Mona Sephina’s issuing
challenge, Dante’s counteroffer, her withdrawal of the challenge, then my
issuing it. Yup. I guess that’s how things had pretty much ended—with my
challenging her, Dante proposing himself as my champion, and my accepting him
as such.
How his eyes had blazed when I had said those words—I accept Dante as my
champion. How odd the twists and turns tricksty fate continued to bring into
our lives.

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Everyone poured out into the courtyard to witness the spectacle about to
unfold.
Oswald had gotten his wish for a bloodier fight. His terms. Unarmed combat,
four-legged form allowed.
I’d seen the look in Dante’s eyes as Oswald had announced the rules. Just a
faint flicker in his eyes, no other betraying movement. But somehow I knew
that the last part of it had bothered him. I didn’t know what Dante’s animal
form was or if he even had one. Could he even shift? If he could, it still had
to be a new ability only recently attained with puberty, which usually took
place around seventeen years of age in Monère males.
I spent another five minutes haggling, to no avail. Oswald’s chosen terms
stood. Shifting was allowed. The only concession I managed to wring from Mona
Sephina was that the winner was the man who first pinned his opponent to the
ground for ten seconds. I don’t know if that helped Dante or made it harder
for him. He gave me no hint, no clue as to what would help him. In truth, he
didn’t seem to really care what the terms were.
Both Mona Sephina and I agreed that the challenge was to be nonfatal. Death
was not allowed. Would be punished, in fact, by awarding victory to the other
side. No guarantee, but at least it would motivate Dante and Oswald not to
kill each other. No male liked to lose.
Again, I didn’t know if that hindered Dante or helped him. Maybe it would have
been easier for Dante to kill Oswald rather than pin him; he was a big guy.
But in this matter I was operating solely on my own preference. And I found
that I’d rather Dante lose and live. In my heart of hearts, I did not want him
to die.
Oswald stripped down to just his pants. Unclothed, he was an even more
imposing figure with a thick chest, massive shoulders, and heavy, dense
muscles that knotted his hairy body with solid strength.
Dante, on the other hand, was more elegantly built, with sleeker muscles. Like
a ballet dancer rather than a burly wrestler. Even the way he removed his
clothes was in marked contrast to the way Oswald had done so. Instead of
rough, forceful gestures, it was a graceful, deliberate disrobing, with
calmness, precision. He passed his sword and dagger into his brother’s
keeping. The wrist bracelets and necklace were removed next and also handed to
Quentin. Standing beside each other, you could see the features that made them
brothers. The similarities—the high-bridged noses, the long, lean cut of their
faces. And their differences—the warm tawny brown of Dante’s hair, his
lightened blond streaks coming from the sun’s natural touch, not a bottle; and
Quentin’s darker hair. One face smooth, almost girlishly pretty with big eyes
and long lashes; the other face less refined, yet roughly beautiful somehow in
its harsh imperfection.
It was in the eyes, though, where the true difference lay. Quentin’s eyes were
still soft, still young. Dante’s eyes were those of an old soul, one that had
lived long and hard. One to whom death, pain, and suffering were familiar
knowledge.
When all items of clothing were removed by Dante, all but for his pants, he
stepped forward into the cleared center, ringed by the curious throng that was
composed of Queens, guards, maids, foot-men, and various other housestaff. All
who had come out to watch the fight.
The two opponents approached each other, and it was like watching a young
David step forward to meet a hulking Goliath. I knew Dante’s history, had seen
him fight. With a sword he was almost unparalleled. But I did not know what he
was capable of in unarmed combat, and the disparity between their sizes…it was
frankly daunting. Dante’s muscles seemed as naught next to the bulk of
Oswald’s more mature, brutish mass. They were of the same height, both just
over six feet, but Oswald was almost twice Dante’s weight. Twice his width.
With a grin, Oswald charged, going after Dante like a two-ton tank. They
collided with resonating impact. Surprisingly, it was Oswald who went tumbling
in the air for a dozen feet before crashing to the ground. The big warrior lay
there for a moment, stunned by the unexpected outcome. Then he picked himself

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up, and with a roar, launched himself at Dante again. With coiled, springing
grace, Dante met him in the air. Oswald swung. With a lithe twist, Dante
ducked his blow, and landed one of his own. The force was enough to alter
Oswald’s course. One moment he was springing forward, the next second Dante
snapped Oswald’s head back with a solid hit that not only halted his forward
momentum, but sent him flying backward in reverse.
Dante seemed to pack quite a punch.
Oswald landed with an impact that made the ground tremble. He shook his head,
clearing it, and seemed to decide that a change in strategy was required. With
a rippling release of power and a sparkle of light, he started to shift.
Oswald’s big, broad face pushed forward into a snout. His brown eyes lightened
to yellow. His spine curved and he fell onto all fours. A short, hairy coat of
tawny fur spilled over his skin, a tufted tail emerged, and a beautiful auburn
mane thickened around his head and shoulders. With a great roar that showcased
the long canines wickedly well, he completed his shift into lion form—a
magnificent and deadly predator, even bigger now than he’d been in his upright
one.
All eyes turned to Dante. Energy pulsed once, twice. But he didn’t shift as
everyone expected. Only two things changed. His eyes silvered, and his hands
started to morph, to shorten, thicken, the bones becoming more curved.
Two-inch long claws pushed out of his fingertips, sliding out like blades. A
partial change. I’d only seen two others do that, shift only that one part of
themselves. One had been Dontaine, my master at arms, and it had not been an
easy thing for him to do—more of a slow and painful process. For Dante, it
seemed as natural and simple as breathing. And his change was even more
refined than Dontaine’s had been. No fur. Just his human skin, though it was
thicker and coarser now. There was no hint of what his animal self was, other
than those long, curved claws. The only other person who had accomplished such
a partial transformation so effortlessly had been Lucinda, Halcyon’s sister, a
demon dead princess.
From the murmurs that came from the audience, the light gasps, I took it to
mean that the partial shift and the ease with which it was done was not a
common ability. Still, impressive though it was, those claws did not seem an
adequate match for Oswald’s lion. I glanced at Nolan and Quentin’s faces, and
saw from their troubled expressions that they did not think so either.
The crowd backed farther way, giving them more room as the lion sprang. Dante
stood his ground. At the last instant, he slashed and rolled out from beneath
those powerful paws, scoring four diagonal cuts along the lion’s underbelly.
It continued in that same pattern, like a beautiful, vicious, choreographed
dance—Oswald attacking and Dante dodging, scoring light hits when he could.
But quick though Dante was, in his lion form Oswald was equally as fast. And
he had four clawed appendages to Dante’s two. On top of that, he had
flesh-tearing canine teeth, making it five weapons in his arsenal to Dante’s
mere two. Inevitably, one of those swiping paws caught Dante. The impact sent
him slamming to the ground, his left side ripped open, the white of his ribs
showing through the torn flesh.
The excitement of the bloodthirsty crowd swelled, and their eager cries
swallowed up my gasp in a sea of sound. But Dante’s eyes turned from his
springing opponent and unerringly found me. As if he’d heard my soft cry of
distress. Could discern it from all the other noise.
Only when he was assured of my physical well-being, that I was fine and my
reaction simply that of seeing him injured, did he turn his attention back to
Oswald, back to the fight.
It left me shaken, that look, that keen awareness of me even in the midst of
battle. I swallowed a scream as the lion fell on Dante.
Dante rolled away at the very last instant so that Oswald hit the ground not
on top of his prey as he had intended, but past him. A hard, downward chop of
Dante’s hand, and the thick bone in the lion’s foreleg broke with an audible
crack. A sweep of Dante’s legs, and the big animal toppled to the ground.
Dante rolled on top of him, and drove his right claws through the lion’s two

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back legs, his left claws stabbing through the upper forelegs, pinning the
beast to the ground in a brutal, effective manner, with his body behind and
out of reach of the great jaws.
The crowd fell unexpectedly silent at the sudden reversal. Into the silence,
Quentin started counting, “One. Two. Three. Four…”
On the count of five, the lion tried to heave back up. With almost casual
violence, Dante yanked his left claws out from the pinned forelegs and
backhanded the beast across his head with a powerful blow. The lion fell back
to the ground, knocked out for the remainder of the count. When ten was called
out, Dante un-hooked his right claws, wiped the blood stains on Oswald’s thick
pelt, and stood up. Two soft pulses of power and the long, hooking nails
shrunk back beneath the flesh, and his hands became just hands once more.
The crowd parted, making way for him as Dante walked back to his brother. He
stood quietly, allowed Quentin to bind his wounds, then donned his necklace,
arm bands, and clothes, in that order. With his dagger secured and his sword
belted at his side, he strode to me and the crowd slipped back away from
him…and from me, once they saw where he was heading. Only Amber, Dontaine,
Tomas, and Aquila remained by my side.
Stopping before me, Dante went down on one knee, bowing his head.
“Your victory, milady.”
Then, with no more fuss than that, he stood and walked away, his family
following after him. Leaving behind a stunned audience of warriors and Queens
and one particularly furious one—Mona Sephina, who gazed down at the still
unconscious Oswald with tight, thin lips.
“That’s a cool one,” someone in the crowd muttered, voicing the sentiment
aloud for us all.
Dante had taken down a warrior much older and more powerful than himself with
an economy of motion, snatching victory from his competitor’s grasp with
simple, elegant savagery. He had defeated a warrior shifted into his animal
form while he had remained in his upright one. Most disturbing of all, though,
was that not once while Dante had fought Oswald had emotion touched him. No
rage, no passion, no anger. Not even triumph in the end.
A cool one, indeed.
And far more dangerous than even they knew.

TWENTY-TWO

I FELT HALCYON’S presence after most of the crowd had drifted away. The sudden
awareness of him was like that of a tuning fork being struck, leaving my
entire body vibrating with every part of me conscious of him. I felt him, felt
his thoughts, and knew that he was lending me some of his control. I tasted
eagerness, concern, curiosity…and nervousness from him.
Why are you nervous? I wondered. Just a normal thought, one that popped into
my mind. I was surprised when he answered.
Meeting you again. Wondering if you had changed your mind on becoming my mate.
His words sounded as clearly in my mind as if he had spoken them out loud.
I saw him then, a slender man with skin a dark, vivid gold against the white
silk of his shirt, his hair a sumptuous fall of black against the white and
gold backdrop. Simple. Elegant. Breathtaking.
Your eyes flatter me. I am most common in looks and appearance, he whispered
in my mind. But I heard a smile in his voice. My own lips curved up in
response.
You are all things but common to me, Halcyon.
Our hands touched, and his fingers wrapped around mine, golden brown skin
against fair white. A lovely study of contrasts. What we were.
He lifted my hand to his lips in a gesture that only he could make so
naturally graceful. “Hell-cat,” he said, and kissed the back of my hand.
“Halcyon.” I brushed my fingertips across his golden cheek and felt warmth

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flare up in his mind and along his skin at my touch. Amber and Dontaine
greeted him politely, and he responded in kind to them, nodded cordially to
Aquila and Tomas.
“It seems I missed quite a show,” Halcyon murmured. But I felt the truth
through that connection we shared. He had deliberately waited until it was
over so that he would not distract me, though it had been hard for him to do
so. To stay away, knowing that I was here.
I was both touched and flattered. And watched, entranced, as a light, scarlet
blush touched that gold-dusted skin.
This connection between us both soothes and stings, Halcyon murmured wryly in
my mind. Nothing can be hidden when we are thus joined.
Out loud he said, “I have something I wish to give you waiting in my quarters.
Will you come with me there?” Silently he added, You can quench your hunger in
the privacy of my place.
I nodded. Told Aquila and Tomas to wait for us at the Council Hall, while
Amber and Dontaine accompanied me to Halcyon’s abode.
“We’ll meet you in a little while,” I told them.
Bowing, Aquila and Tomas left.
Halcyon took my hand, set it in the crook of his arm, and led me down a path
that wound behind the Great House. We passed a few other small, private
residences before we finally arrived at his. It was set farthest back, away
from the other lodgings, closest to the bordering thicket of woods. His
dwelling here was simple and comfortably furnished, smelling like him, I
thought, as I stepped through the doorway.
We do not have scents was his amused thought.
Then what do I smell?
What you are picking up is my physic scent. And because he was not used to
censoring his thoughts, I caught the rest of it. That it was something that
was only normally sensed by other demons.
He caught my distress. “Forgive me, Hell-cat. That was thoughtless of me,” he
murmured, earning puzzled glances from Amber and Dontaine.
After we entered, Halcyon lifted his hand and stroked his palm over a stone
mosaic design made of individual rocks embedded in the wall. As he passed his
hand over it, a small, nondescript gray pebble set near the bottom began to
glow, turning emerald green. I felt the thrumming energy slide over me and
stretch wide to encompass the entire room.
“You already know what it is,” Halcyon said with surprise.
“A privacy shield. A sound barrier. So that no one outside can hear us.” I
knew because Dante and his mother each had a similar stone.
Interesting, Halcyon thought. Kámennae stone are quite rare.
What type of rocks are they?
Have you not guessed yet? They are remnants from our mother planet, the moon.
Taken from her core.
“You can speak to each other mind-to-mind,” Amber said, breaking into our
silent conversation.
“Yes,” I confirmed, and felt apprehension flit through me. I had not told
Amber of my new demon nature. The reason why I had asked him to come here now
with Dontaine was so that I could explain it. So that he could see and know.
“I have a small part of Halcyon’s demon essence in me that allows this
communication. It is not something he infected me with,” I added quickly, as
concern and anger flared up hot and strong in Amber’s eyes, changing his blue
eyes into the yellow-gold color of his name. “It’s something I took into
myself through my own actions.” And that of another Queen.
“An accident,” I murmured, though it had not been so much an accident as
ignorance. When I had sucked Mona Louisa’s light and essence into me, it had
been with the full intent of killing her. Infecting me with Halcyon’s demon
essence, which she had drank down into her, had just been an unforeseen side
effect.
“Halcyon would not have knowingly done this.” I put my hand over Amber’s arm,
and felt his thick muscles tighten beneath my grip. “It makes them vulnerable

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to those like me. They call us Damanôen, demon living, because we can sense
them. In fact, it was their past practice to kill all those like me.”
I felt Amber’s energy flare anew beneath my restraining grip. “Halcyon’s
trying to save me, Amber, not kill me. One of the reasons why he wishes to
publicly claim me as his mate.”
“To give you his protection,” Amber said in a hard, grating voice.
I nodded. “And as a diversion. We want people to think that Halcyon infected
me because of my intimacy with him as his mate.”
“Why?”
“To hide the real reason why I have become demon living.”
“And what is the real reason?” he asked.
“I cannot tell you, ever. That is the real secret we are protecting. I’m
sorry, Amber.”
Those feral yellow eyes stared down at me. “If the cost of it is your life,
then it is knowledge I can live forever without.”
I squeezed his arm in gratitude.
“That’s the reason why you wished to rid yourself of the babe,” Amber said in
sudden understanding.
“Yes. Even though the child could be yours, I feared how this change in me
would affect it.”
“It is not mine, Mona Lisa.”
Amber’s words startled me with their surety. “You sound as if you know this
for certain.”
“I do,” Amber said. “Who have you shared your body with since this new life
has sparked in you?”
Actually, I had to stop and think about it a moment. To rerun the past few
days in my mind. “Just Dante.”
“Only Dante. Since that first time you lay with him,” Amber said.
“Why do you sound so sure about that?”
“We are the children of the moon. Beings tied close with nature and its
rhythms. A Monère woman knows whose seed has taken root in her body. And she
will instinctively desire only that man while his child grows in her.”
“Oh.” There was still so much I did not know about who and what I was. But
with that explanation, my behavior of the past few days became clearer now.
Why I had just slept in Amber’s arms and then Dontaine’s. How I had lain with
them without making love with them, without desiring to do so, and why they
had not pressed themselves on me. I realized the full significance now of that
look in Dante’s eyes when I had taken him into my body that last time of my
own free will, of my own instinctive desire. He had known then, for sure.
Everyone had known who the father of my child was all this time. Even me, deep
inside.
Amber turned to Halcyon. Asked him, “What can we do to protect her?”
“Just be near her” was Halcyon’s answer. “And be willing to donate your blood
should she need it. The demon part of her lies dormant until it is triggered
by the presence of another demon. Then bloodlust, an almost overwhelming
hunger at first, rises up within her. She will be able to control it more as
time passes. In the beginning, however, it will be more prudent to simply
slake her thirst instead of trying to fight it. A small drink of blood will
regain her much of her control.”
“She is in your presence now and has not evidenced the bloodlust you speak
of,” Amber observed.
“Because I have linked us mentally, giving her some of my control. I wished to
reach the privacy of my quarters before I unleashed it.”
“You can do so now,” Amber said. “I will gladly give her my blood.”
“That is my role,” Dontaine said, stepping up to my side. “She asked us to
come with her here so that she can explain this to you and drink from me.” He
bent down to me, tilting his neck to the side. And with an abruptness that was
like a curtain tearing away, Halcyon’s control was removed.
Need crashed over me in a sudden deluge, and hunger, thirst, flared up inside
me. My teeth morphed into sharp, piercing fangs and plunged into the white

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neck offered up before me. I drank him down mindlessly, reveling in the rich,
piquant lifeblood flowing into me, gulping it down greedily at first, then
more savoringly. Such bountiful flavor. Such abundant life. The taste was
incomparable, and the need it filled beyond description. Dontaine moaned
against me, clutching me to him, and I pressed my body against him willingly
like a cat rolling sensually in catnip.
Unthinking need receded, and awareness returned. Enough, I thought, and felt
the blood slow and thicken beneath my tongue. Reluctantly, I pulled out of
that rich vein I had so easily tapped, so easily piercing that soft, tender
flesh.
Perhaps it was because I was more familiar with it now that the thought of
drinking blood no longer repulsed me. I hadn’t fought it this time, and
control and thought had returned more quickly, easily.
I stepped back from Dontaine and looked up at Amber, let him see my fangs, the
blood coating them. Another deliberate thought, and I shrank them down, felt
them become normal teeth once more.
There was shock in Amber’s eyes, and I reacted without thought to it.
“No, don’t turn away from me,” Amber said, pulling my stiff body back against
his much larger one. “It was just the surprise of seeing it. Even after you
had told me, it’s not the same as seeing it for the very first time.”
“Let me go, Amber,” I said, my voice low, hard, closed down.
“Never.” His arms tightened around me. “Don’t run away from me.”
“I repulse you.”
“No! It was just…different, new. Forgive me.”
Another pair of arms came around us, glowing with soft light. Dontaine’s blond
hair brushed feather-soft across my face as he drew up against me.
“That was wonderful,” he murmured in a thick, dreamy voice, nuzzling behind my
ear, positioning his neck a whisper away from my mouth. “Drink from me some
more.”
The unfeigned eager press of his body against mine was a soothing balm healing
the cracks of my uncertainty. Pulling an unwilling smile from me.
“You sound like a cat that has just lapped down cream, instead of being the
one who was drunk down,” I observed.
“What you made me feel was far better than any cream could ever taste.”
Dontaine rubbed his face and body against me with a soft, sensuous purr.
“Sweet blessed moon. That was almost as good as being inside you.”
“You felt pleasure?” I asked.
“Beyond your imagining.”
“Did it hurt?”
He drew back just enough so I could see his face. “Only when you first bit me.
Then it disappeared and all I felt was this amazing pleasure rolling over me,
filling me.”
“It will get even better when she gains more finesse,” Halcyon promised.
A delicious shudder ran through Dontaine’s body. “I can’t wait.” And the way
he said it brought another smile to my lips.
I patted Amber’s hand, letting him know that I was all right. “It’s okay,” I
said softly. “It’s new to everybody. We’re all learning how this works.”
He let his arms fall away. Instead of stepping away from him, I turned and
wrapped my arms around Amber, burying my face against that broad chest that
made me feel so safe. He was my anchor in this world, and I clung to him as
such.
He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, then set me from him, crouching down
so that we were face-to-face. “I would have you take blood from me next time.
It would please me…as Dontaine is making so damn obvious,” he said with a
slight smile.
“Next time,” I promised, feeling my world settle once more back onto its axis.
When all was tranquil once more, Halcyon presented me with a beautifully
carved, small wooden box, inlaid with ivory and gold. “I brought you here not
only to feed, but to give you this,” he said, putting it into my hands.
It was a gift from my mate.

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“Oh, Halcyon.” I lifted stricken eyes to his. “I didn’t think to get you
anything.”
“You have given me the gift of yourself. All else is immaterial. Do not
distress yourself. It is truly not so much a gift as my claim on you for
others to see. Open it.”
I did and gasped. Inside was an exquisite cameo necklace with Halcyon’s
likeness. It was framed around the rim by scroll-like writing. At the bottom
was engraved the image of a fierce dragon. But the most striking part of it
was the bright, glittery metal of the necklace itself, something that would
catch every Monère’s eye.
“The chain is silver,” I said.
“Yes, I had it made thus in your honor. For the only Monère Queen to whom
silver is not a weakness but a strength.”
The touch of silver against a Monère’s skin usually drained them of their
power, made them only human strong. I was not only not weakened by it, but
seemed to have an affinity for it, able to call any weapon made out of silver
easily to my hand.
“Even the demons know this about you,” Halcyon said.
“What does this say?” I asked, tracing a finger over the characters carved
around his likeness.
“The character on the left means royal, the one on your right that you are
touching means consort. The dragon denotes my lineage and is the crest of our
family line.” His dark chocolate eyes met mine. “Will you wear this?”
The picture of him, the words “royal consort,” and the dragon crest all
denoted his claim and protection over me. But the silver it was set upon was a
tribute to me, to my individual strength. It was a melding of us both,
thoughtfully done.
“Of course.” My fingers fumbled a little as I reached behind, unfastening the
silver cross I wore. It had been the only thing found on me as an infant.
Something left by my birth mother, I had thought, and had been my most
cherished possession, something I wore always. Even after I found out it had
been Sonia, the midwife, who had given it to me, who had loved me as my mother
had not, I had still worn it as a familiar comfort. I took it off now, a
symbol of my past, and fastened Halcyon’s cameo in its place.
I smoothed my hand over the cameo, which I left prominently displayed, not
hidden under my dress as my other necklace had been. Outside where everyone
could see it and know who I was—the High Prince of Hell’s chosen consort.
“You honor me, ena.” Halcyon breathed the last word out like a soft caress. I
knew now that it meant wife. And flushed a little at the meaning of it, the
acceptance of it. His light kiss was as gentle and tender as the endearment he
had whispered.
“Come,” he said, placing my hand once more on his arm. “Let us go attend to
Council affairs.”

TWENTY-THREE

THE FIRST ITEM of business we attended to, as it turned out, was the public
presentation of me before the other Council members. I entered the large domed
chamber on Halcyon’s arm, and all eyes immediately zoomed in on the cameo
necklace I wore. And on Halcyon’s protective hand placed at the small of my
back as he led me up the tiered steps to my seat. A small collective stirring
occurred when he sat, not in his usual place across the room, but in the
armchair next to mine. A not-so-subtle political power statement, clearly
allying himself with me.
There were over thirty Council members present, filling the chamber almost to
capacity. A dozen new Queens numbered among them, and I wondered at the
turnout. Wondered if it was because of me. Whether the rumors of the new Mixed
Blood Queen and her recent Court antics had drawn them here. Or if it was

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because of another event unbeknownst to me. The way they were all looking at
me, I was laying bet on the former.
The new Queens’ eyes were not all outright hostile like Mona Teresa’s was. I’d
mentally dubbed Mona Teresa the Fire Queen for her flame-colored hair and
spiteful nature. Nasty would best describe her and most of the Queens I’d met
to date, for that matter, all except Mona Carlisse, the only Queen I counted
as a friend. Sadly, she was not present.
I was willing to reserve judgment on the other Queens arrayed here. And by the
cool reserve in their eyes, they seemed inclined to do the same with me. There
were more healers, denoted by their maroon garments, filling out the
assemblage, along with a couple more white-robed ladies. All women but for
three men: Halcyon, Amber, and Lord Thorane. Amber was new, granted a seat on
the Council by his new status as Warrior Lord, one of only two that existed.
Lord Thorane, the Council speaker, was the other. Had Gryphon still been
alive, he would have sat here among us also.
It was an open session, meaning that guards and other spectators stood back
along the walls, watching the proceedings. The Council members were arrayed in
rings around a central clearing, the area where the petitioners stood and
presented their cases.
Lord Thorane opened the session, and sure enough, I was the first matter of
business called. It was actually Halcyon’s name that was pronounced, but since
I was the matter he was presenting before everyone, he drew me to my feet and
walked me down the steps into the center.
Of everyone present, it was the Queen Mother who dominated over us all. Not
just in status but in palpable strength. Hers was a presence I had always
felt. But for some reason, I felt her even sharper now. Her power and age
tasted acute to my senses, not at all mellow like you would imagine it might
be from someone as advanced in years as she was. Unlike everyone else present,
the Queen Mother was obviously old. Wrinkles marred her face, testament to the
passage of time and her enduring presence through it.
Halcyon bowed and I curtsied before her. Not as graceful as he, but then
again, I hadn’t had over six hundred years to perfect the gesture like he had.
“Queen Mother. Honored Queens. Ladies and gentlemen of the Court,” Halcyon
said, addressing the others. “It gives me great pleasure to present my chosen
mate before you, my royal consort, Queen Mona Lisa.”
Nothing more than that. They were simple words stirring a complex reaction
that rippled around the room. The distress caused by the announcement was
obvious, but no one dared voice anything out loud in front of the High Prince
of Hell. Couldn’t blame them. Never knew when you were suddenly going to find
yourself in his realm.
The Queen Mother acknowledged his announcement. “Prince Halcyon, this Monère
High Court is pleased for you and your mate, Queen Mona Lisa, High Lady of
Hell.” I started a little at that unexpected title. “We wish you joy and
happiness,” she said, bestowing the words like a blessing. I bowed my head,
accepting it as such, touched by it. Happiness and joy. They were two things
that seemed so ephemeral in my life, like precious liquid I could only cup in
my hand for a few brief moments before it trickled through my fingers, lost.
“Thank you, Queen Mother, members of the Council.” I inclined my head to the
others. No curtseying, you are above them now in rank, Halcyon had told me.
Taking my hand, Halcyon led us off the floor, back to our seats.
When the next order of business came up—my petition to have the west
Mississippi portion of my land set up as a separate and independent territory,
with Warrior Lord Amber recognized as the official ruler there—it passed with
not one single opposition.
Halcyon’s amusement whispered in my mind. Why are you so surprised?
I didn’t expect it to be that easy. Not even Mona Teresa opposed it. I think I
like being your mate. Everyone is being much nicer to me.
Halcyon’s mental laughter rolled richly through my mind.
And so they should. But it is in their own interests to agree with your
proposal. It is only your land being offered up, not theirs. They do not have

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to give up any of their own territory. Why should they not agree? Likewise,
they would see separating a powerful Warrior Lord from your side as to their
benefit.
A part of me was saddened by the accuracy of Halcyon’s words. My intent had
been to elevate Amber, to align him beside me. But in doing so, I had
separated him from me. Put physical distance between us.
Do not be so sad, Hell-cat, Halcyon murmured as he tasted the melancholy
lacing my thoughts. Amber knows and appreciates what you have done for him.
You have not lost him any more than you have lost me simply because I cannot
walk beside you every day or be with you every night. You are our home. We
shall always return to you.
His words and the honest emotions behind them—feelings that he could not hide
from me when we were linked this way—comforted me. I was blessed despite
myself.
High Court adjourned several hours later and the real festivities began. Tents
were erected on the sprawling lawn, and trade counselors were inundated with
service people seeking new positions in other courts. Men, women, a few
families, warriors, and trades-men. The greatest number at this fair, however,
was the assemblage of young boys. Eighteen-year-old virgins were gathered like
a flock of colorful peacocks at the largest central tent, arrayed in their
best finery with hair neatly combed, nails buffed, and shoes polished. They
looked like high school boys going out on their prom night. Only the dates
they took home tonight would be the Queens who had selected them. And it would
not be just a kiss that was taken but their virginity.
“My goodness, why are there so many boys here?” I felt their eager attention
hone in on me, a Queen, as I walked by on Halcyon’s arm, the Demon Prince on
one side of me, Amber, my giant Warrior Lord, on the other.
“It is the first gathering after winter solstice,” Amber explained. “Most of
the boys who are of age seek their Virgin Claiming during this first session
of the new year. It’s considered good luck to enter your manhood during this
time. Summer solstice is another popular time. I see my two boys near the
center there.”
“My two are at the end,” I said softly, finding them easily in the crowd.
Quentin and Dante. Their clothes were less gaudily bright than the others.
They were dressed in simple attire that enhanced their more developed
physiques.
They stood out in other ways. They were older, for one, a striking and obvious
difference. The other boys stood on the cusp of manhood, eager and young.
Quentin and Dante had taken the step over that line already, denoted by their
calm assurance, their more noticeable reserve. Men in maturity of mind and
spirit. No longer boys.
They were also far more beautiful in my eyes. The simplicity of their clothes
drew attention to the lean, masculine beauty of their faces, to the greater
breadth of their shoulders, their more muscular arms and chests. And any Queen
who had witnessed the fight between Oswald and Dante knew firsthand what a
superb warrior Dante was, so different from the other young lads here. His
wounds had been healed by Hannah, probably as soon as she’d been able to lay
hands on him, and he seemed none the worse for wear from his earlier
challenge.
Quentin served as a bridge, standing between his brother and the other virgin
boys. Dante stood at the end, positioned halfway between that tent and the
next one, which housed older warriors seeking positions, a more desperate lot.
They were quieter, more somber men, less than a handful. It was in this group
that Dante technically belonged, because he was not a virgin. Not anymore. Yet
neither did he really belong with the older men.
Dante’s apartness seemed to have intrigued the Queens. He had not one but five
of them looking him over, perusing him with interest. But even surrounded by
Queens, his gaze unerringly found mine.
Instead of looking ecstatic as he should have been at so much interest, he
looked…desolate. He answered their questions politely and allowed them to look

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him over like a stud they were considering buying. He didn’t preen as the
other young lads did, he simply endured it, tolerating it with a dispassion
that bordered on frank disinterest.
“I will leave you to attend to your matters here,” Halcyon murmured. “There
are matters I wish to discuss with the other Council members before the next
meeting.” It was a considerate gesture on his part. He had made public his
claim on me, and now was allowing us separate time to each attend to our own
affairs. Maybe he even thought I wished to choose one of the boys for myself
and didn’t wish me to feel constrained by his presence. Drawing my hand up, he
kissed the back of it. Then he was gone, gracefully winding his way through
the crowd, leaving me in Amber’s care.
“Dante and Quentin seem to be quite popular,” I observed, eyeing the two
Queens who were circling Quentin; he had his admirers as well. “I can
understand Quentin, but why the interest in Dante when he is no longer a
virgin?”
“But who did he lose his virginity to?” Amber asked. “You. Very few unclaimed
males have that distinction. And with his lightly tanned skin, they cannot
help but wonder if he has acquired some of your gifts, such as your rare gift
of walking under the sun without burning. Can he do that now?”
“I don’t know,” I answered in a muted voice. “My best guess is probably not.
Dontaine gained nothing from lying with me. My gifts don’t seem to transfer so
easily anymore.” Not since I had taken the demon essence into me. Perhaps it
was better that way. It would have been a disaster if I had been able to pass
the demon taint as easily as I had passed on my other abilities before.
A Queen, one of the new ones I didn’t know, stroked a bold hand down Dante’s
backside. Seeing him being fondled ignited a maelstrom of unpleasant emotion
within me. She was either daring or stupid. Or simply arrogant, as all Queens
naturally seemed to be, sure that her touch would be welcomed. With Dante,
none of the other Queens had dared that liberal stroking and caressing that
the other boys not only encouraged but preened beneath. There was a dangerous
stillness to Dante’s reserve that the other Queens had sensed and respected.
All but this one.
Dante’s gaze broke away from me to focus on that other Queen, the one who had
dared touch him. His expression, one that I could not see, made her hand fall
away. Though she didn’t back up or do anything so obvious, her arrogant,
inspecting saunter around him increased the distance between them.
His attention drifted away from her like an annoying gnat already forgotten
and returned to me. The other Queens saw where his eyes wandered, and gazed
speculatively at me.
Hope had flared in Dante’s eyes at the sight of me. Hope that he had quickly
hidden. But I had sensed it still.
Don’t make me go, those eyes cried. Keep me. No words spoken aloud or heard in
the mind. Just that look. Those burning embers of hope.
Something twisted painfully inside of me.
I can’t…I can’t keep you. You’re too dangerous. You killed everyone I ever
loved before.
Reading the answer in my eyes, he gazed at me like a thirsty man looks at a
fountain of water he knows he will never drink from again. Desolation filled
the pale blue depths, extinguishing that last wild hope. And with it gone, it
was as if a flame had been snuffed out, leaving them cold, dead, and empty.
His eyes dropped away from mine.
“You should come away,” Amber urged, a silent witness to our byplay.
I almost did, even started to turn away, but stopped when I caught sight of
another Queen. This one I knew and hated bitterly. Mona Teresa. Her
flame-colored hair glinted beneath the moonlight as she sauntered her way down
the line of virgin boys, her six guards following behind her. The guard
closest to her I recognized as the man who had raped Tersa on his Queen’s
order. Guilt and hatred burned in me at the sight of him.
With a careless caress here, an intimate handling there, Mona Teresa sampled
the virgin lads. The boys quivered beneath her touch, just like the horseflesh

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she casually treated them like. Disappointment was keen in their eyes as she
passed them all by, to stop and linger before Quentin, drinking in his perfect
male beauty. With a smirk aimed my way, she continued on down the line to
Dante, whose beauty was more harsh like a natural gemstone. Less refined, more
primitive. Knowledge was in her eyes, and purpose.
“She knows,” Amber murmured, oddly echoing my thoughts. “She knows his
history. And yours.”
What he was really saying was: She knows he killed you before, and wants him
because of that. Gossip about his past and mine must have spread like wildfire
after the challenge and his unexpected win. If news of my pregnancy had been
whispered of as well, Dante would become a hotly desired acquisition for any
Queen. Especially one who hated me.
“I’ve already offered for him, Mona Teresa,” said the Queen circling Dante.
“And has he accepted it, Mona Annabella?” Mona Teresa asked with a mocking
smile.
“He has not given his answer yet to any of us,” Mona Annabella returned, her
dark eyes flashing with spite. “You’re welcome to tender your offer and see
how you fare.”
I was a little shocked to hear he had had offers. More than one. What was he
waiting for?
“Come away,” Amber urged again, but I could not. I had to watch. Had to know
to whom he would go.
Mona Teresa tilted her head. “Join my service, Dante, and I will promise you
ten years in my bed.”
She made it sound like a generous offer, making me wonder how long virgin boys
usually lasted in a Queen’s bed before she tired of them and moved on to new
untried flesh.
“I will consider it,” Dante said in a voice that held no eagerness, no joy. No
word of thanks.
The other Queens tittered and Mona Teresa’s eyes flashed. But her voice stayed
slitheringly calm, like a snake just before it pumped venom into its prey.
“Fifteen years in my bed if you accept my offer now.”
He looked at her with no change in expression, and repeated his words from
before. “I will consider it.”
Denial of her offer by his very lack of acceptance.
If he saw Mona Teresa’s dark flush of anger, it concerned him not. All caring
seemed to have left him.
“How dare you!” Mona Teresa hissed, fury lacing her words. Lunging at him, she
raked her nails down the side of his face.
The apathy left Dante. His features hardened, and his eyes flashed to
dangerous silver. Amber and I were both moving forward together as she lunged
at Dante again.
A normal young Monère male would have fallen back beneath a Queen’s attack,
nothing more than that. Dante was not a typical Monère guy. He had been raised
among the humans. He had lived countless lifetimes. And in another time, he
had been a warlord of such feared renown that songs had been sung about him
and legends told.
Dante didn’t step back or cower under Mona Teresa’s attack. He stood there,
and with a simple block of his arm, he swept aside her clawed hands with
insulting ease.
The other boys watching gasped as if he had done the unthinkable. And perhaps
he had, I don’t know. Maybe there was some stupid law saying that you couldn’t
defend yourself against a Queen.
Mona Teresa’s six guards drew their swords and advanced with lethal intent on
Dante.
“Stay here,” Amber said urgently, grabbing my arm and dragging me to a halt.
“For his sake. And for yours.”
Oh yeah, I’m pregnant, carrying his child…a precious life that he believes to
be his chance at breaking the curse. It stopped me as nothing else could have.
Satisfied that I was staying put, Amber left me and rushed to Dante’s aid.

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I wasn’t used to that. Staying back and being safe when my men were in danger.
I cursed myself now for not bringing Tomas, Aquila, and Dontaine along. I had
thought to spare Dante’s pride and my own raw nerves.
“Kill him!” Mona Teresa ordered her men. They rushed him and everyone
scattered back away from them, all but Quentin. He stayed at his brother’s
side. A noble gesture, I thought, but a useless one. Both of them were
unarmed.
“Stop,” I yelled, fighting the only way left to me—with words. “You attacked
him, Mona Teresa. He merely defended himself.”
“He dared raise his hand against me. Everyone here is witness to that,” Mona
Teresa said, almost spitting with outrage. “It is my right to demand his head
for that. Kill him! I want him dead.”
“No! He is still mine, under my protection.” But my words did nothing as mere
words often did. Only might mattered here.
Amber dived into the melee, his sword drawn, and three of Mona Teresa’s men
turned to meet him. The sound of clashing metal filled the air. And it was not
just the sound of sword striking against sword, but sword scraping against
Dante and Quentin’s bracelet guards. It puzzled the warriors who attacked them
for a moment because the metal bands were hidden beneath their shirts. A few
block and strikes later, though, the cut cloth gaped open, revealing the wide
bracelets hugging Dante’s and Quentin’s wrists.
The two brothers fought one guard apiece. They dodged and twisted lightly on
their feet, and the swords either slashed empty air or came up against those
deflecting wrist guards. It would have been a mesmerizing thing to see, almost
like a graceful, twisting ballet, were it not so deadly in intent, and so
unmatched. One sword against six, with Dante and Quentin fighting without
weapons. But that I could do something about.
Walking closer to the crowd, I scanned the gathering onlookers, searching
specifically for other Queens and their guards. With my strong affinity for
silver, I could call any silver dagger to my hand. I could do the same with a
sword, though not as easily since swords were rarely silver. No need to be
when the main purpose was to cut off your opponent’s head with them—simple
steel did that easily enough. For nonsilver weapons, I usually had to
familiarize myself first with the taste and smell of them. Amber’s blade had
smelled like ancient battle and had tasted like spilled blood. The remembered
scent and flavor of it rushed back into my mind, and I focused on two older,
more powerful guards, reasoning that their swords would be most like Amber’s.
My palms stretched out, my moles tingled and pulsed. Nothing.
A second throbbing pulse with a deeper, pulling power, and yes! The two swords
slid from their scabbards and flew into my hands, hilt-first.
What do you know? It worked.
“Dante! Quentin!” I called, and tossed the swords to them when they turned
their faces to me. They leaped, caught the weapons in the air, and landed
lightly, spinning back to face their opponents.
Now they were evenly matched, three swords against six. Okay, actually
overmatched, with the advantage ours now. But I wasn’t too concerned about
being fair, not when Mona Teresa hadn’t sweated it. And talking about that
redheaded bitch. She’d drawn her dagger and looked as if she was considering
hurling it into Dante’s back, a coward’s blow.
Eyes narrowed, I extended my hand again. Her dagger—it was silver, wasn’t that
nice?—flew to me like a bird, coming to rest neatly in my palm.
I tsked. “Nuh-uh-uh. No backstabbing allowed.”
“You unholy mongrel bitch.” Drawing her other dagger, nonsilver, she came at
me quickly. I barely had time to think—Should I run?—before she was on me.
Okay. I had time to think about it, and do it. But, goddamn it, I didn’t want
to run from her. What if I ran and she turned back and buried her blade in one
of my men’s backs like the treacherous bitch she was? And she might. Because
she knew, as I did, by Dante’s and Quentin’s deft handling of their swords,
that her men were outclassed. I, on the other hand, could fight her with
impunity by our laws, Queen against Queen. I could even kill her if I needed

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to, though that was not my intent. I’d caused enough uproar as it was at High
Court already. No need to add another Queen’s death to the mess, especially
coming so quickly on top of the other one I’d been involved in. Two of them, I
think, would be stretching even the Council’s tolerance, Halcyon’s new High
Lady of Hell or not. To be on the safe side, I tossed away the silver dagger
I’d snatched from Mona Teresa and faced her unarmed. My blade might
accidentally-on-purpose bury itself in her black, cowardly heart if I faced
her with a tempting weapon in my hand.
She slashed at me quick, like a serpent striking. I twisted to the side and
grabbed her hand as it came flying by.
“Mona Lisa, no!” Amber cried, catching sight of us. He quickly cut down the
two remaining men he fought—the third one he had already dispatched—and ran
toward us, dropping his sword, coming at us unarmed.
I was distracted by the sight, concerned with Amber coming between us, two
Queens. Because even though he was a Warrior Lord, our supposed equal, he
still was not really equal in the Council’s eyes. If anything happened to Mona
Teresa, Amber would be blamed and punished. Maybe even killed.
I froze, my attention drawn away from my opponent, which is never a smart
thing to do. She kneed me in the stomach. It was a blow I could have easily
blocked had I been paying attention, but I wasn’t. It caught me with full,
stunning force, and I felt something delicate, something fragile, tear inside
of me. Then I felt pain. Stunning, incapacitating pain as I crumpled to the
ground.
“Noooo!” someone roared. A man’s voice—Dante’s—but sounding as I’d never heard
him before. Amber reached us and pulled Mona Teresa off me, unarmed her. He
held her a safe distance away from me, letting her kick and punch and claw at
him as he turned his eyes to me. “Mona Lisa.”
Then Dante was there. If his voice had sounded frightening, the look on his
face was even more so.
“Get that bitch away from her,” he told Amber in a voice so nakedly vicious
that I shivered. “Quentin, find Mother. Bring her quickly.”
His hands when they touched me, though, were gentle. So gentle they brought
tears to my eyes. A horrible fear gripped me as I smelled blood and felt
wetness pool beneath me, flowing out between my legs.
“Oh God, Dante. Our baby…I’m so sorry.” Wet tears stung my eyes, streaming out
almost as quickly as the blood gushing from my womb. I writhed painfully in
his arms as a terrible cramp seized me, hardening my belly.
“Easy, dulcaeta,” he soothed. His eyes, turned that ferocious, glittering
silver, left mine and speared someone in the crowd. “Go find a healer,” he
growled, and the man quickly ran to do his bidding. When the spasm passed, he
eased me gently onto his lap and laid his hands over mine, two sets of hands
protectively covering my belly.
“Easy, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Don’t cry. It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t okay. And I couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t stop cramping. I
cried and bled as he rocked me, and felt his own tears splash down to mingle
with mine.
“I’m sorry, so sorry,” I whispered feverishly against him, over and over
again, stopping only when another spasm gripped me.
Soft hands pushed our hands aside. I looked up, and through my pain, saw
Hannah kneeling at our side, Quentin and Nolan standing behind her.
“Let me see, milady,” Hannah said urgently. I stopped fighting her and she
ripped open my dress at the waist and laid her healing hands quickly over my
bared belly. I felt her seeking warmth sink down into my flesh, and like that,
the pain, the cramping eased. The bleeding slowed.
“My baby?” I asked, voice trembling.
“I’m sorry,” Hannah said in a bare whisper. “It’s gone already. I could not
save it.”
Gone already. Her words echoed hollowly within me as she finished the healing.
When it was complete, Dante gently eased out from beneath me, laid me back
down. When he stood, I saw that he was drenched in my blood. In our baby’s

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blood. He turned those fearsome eyes on Mona Teresa. She stood about thirty
feet away where Amber had dragged her. The look in those silver eyes held the
same awful expression I had seen once before in my dreams—that look of
vengeance, of terrible retribution.
“You killed my unborn child.” His words rang out loudly like a death knell. “I
will take the lives of your men in return. Be grateful it is not your own life
I will seek this retribution on. But I promise you this: If I am to remain
cursed, I shall see to it that you share in it with me.”
He turned toward her guards, and long hooking claws almost eight inches in
length unfurled from his fingertips with a hiss of energy—twice as long as
they had been when he had fought in the challenge against Oswald. He had been
holding back, it seemed.
A few of Mona Teresa’s guards had risen to their feet, helping their more
severely injured comrades. The six warriors took one look at those claws, that
maddened face, those silver gleaming eyes, and scrambled hastily for their
swords. Some of them even grabbed it up in their hands before Dante reached
them. He walked to them slowly, surely. In no seeming hurry to deliver the
death he had pronounced upon them.
Two of them rushed at Dante, with sword and dagger in hand.
I said urgently to his father, “Give him your sword.”
“He doesn’t need it,” Nolan said, watching his son.
Dante turned their blades away like a careless afterthought, deflecting the
blows with his wrist guards. Then in a move so fast you weren’t able to track
it with your eyes, he sliced them open.
Splashing blood. Tearing cries.
Their intestines were still spilling out from their opened bellies when he
sliced down again with those claws and took off their hands. Swords dropped
down, daggers clattered to the ground with bleeding limbs still attached.
Turning his back on one eviscerated warrior, Dante concentrated his attention
on the taller one, the guard who had raped Tersa. Another slice, aimed higher,
and the man’s head came flying off. A flash of light, a puff of dust, followed
almost immediately by a second shower of light and ashes as Dante spun around
and took off the first warrior’s head, so that they were like two strobe
lights going off in quick succession.
The coldness of his execution, his deadly accuracy with those claws, and the
lethal consequences of them, struck pure terror in the remaining four men.
They fled, or tried to.
“Stop,” Dante commanded. His silver eyes were glowing now, and even standing
where I was, distant from where they fought, I felt the power that flared out
with that command. They froze, all four of them unable to move, unable to
fight against that compulsion. And everyone watching him—Queens, powerful
warriors—gasped in fear and realization at what he was able to do.
The four guards stood captured by his will as Dante walked to them. When he
stood before them, he said, “You are free.”
They moved. All four going in different directions, trying to escape him. Not
one of them tried to attack him.
Dante moved even quicker. Nothing but a blur, then four more flashes of light.
Ashes puffed over him, coating him gray, so that he looked like a ghostly
specter. A horrifying creature drawn from your darkest nightmare.
For a long moment there was nothing but awful silence. Then the silence was
torn apart as Dante threw back his head and screamed. A terrible roar of grief
and heartbreak howled up to the heavens. To the distant moon.
One loud, trembling moment…then he was gone. Vanished before our eyes.

EPILOGUE

KNOWLEDGE IS A funny thing. I’d always reacted badly to loss, shutting myself
down, going into a shocklike withdrawal, like when Gryphon, the first man I

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ever loved, had left me for another Queen. Then again when he died, was killed
by her. It was a lesson I had learned early in life. Don’t love things, don’t
grow attached. Because it hurts too much when you lose them.
I’d thought that my extreme reaction was because I had been abandoned as a
newborn, then cancer had taken Helen, my adopted mother, from me when I was
six, and I had been sent to live in a series of foster homes. But I knew now
that the foundation had been laid long before in another lifetime, by another
man. A man whose baby I had carried for a brief time. I mourned that loss,
that little spark of life. A surprise. Or perhaps not so surprising. When I
finally wanted something, that was when it was usually taken from me.
Maybe it was knowing why I reacted so violently to loss that bolstered that
most vulnerable part of me—my psyche. I did not fall into a numbing decline as
my men feared I would. I just simply grieved, mourning not only the loss of
the baby, but the loss of the babe’s father also.
Quentin was accepted by a young Queen, Mona Maretta. A brave acquisition. Or
perhaps bravery had nothing to do with it. Maybe she had simply coveted his
perfect male beauty.
Dante had disappeared. Gone, I thought, but not quite as gone as everyone
might have wished. When I returned home the next day, Lord Thorane called me
with the news that Dante had slaughtered all of Mona Teresa’s warriors. Not
just the six that had accompanied her to High Court, but the other twenty-four
men that had remained behind in her territory. Dante had appeared there the
next day like a wrathful god, taking his vengeance out on the rest of her men.
Just the warriors this time, sparing the housestaff, showing more mercy than
they realized. None of her guards, though, were left alive. He’d cut them
down, one by one, eviscerating them, breaking their legs or chopping them off
so they could not run away. Then he had proceeded to calmly tear them apart,
limb by bloody limb, or had sliced them to pieces until they had begged to
die. In the end, all that remained was blood and ashes, scattered empty
clothes, and echoing cries.
Upon returning home, seeing the terrible carnage, and hearing her housestaff’s
frightful tales, Mona Teresa had flown immediately back to High Court, seeking
their protection from “the madman,” as she called Dante. Her frenzied cry for
justice, however, fell on flat ears. We were Monère, after all. Children of
the moon. Creatures of supernatural power. If you were not strong enough to
survive, then you did not deserve to—that was the rule under which we all
existed. All but the Queens, that is. Only the precious Ladies of Light were
afforded greater protection by the Court. Protection, yes, but not
retribution.
Mona Teresa, by her actions, however unknowing they had been—and that was
suspect—had caused the loss of Dante’s unborn child and injured another Queen.
A Queen who was the High Prince of Hell’s chosen and acknowledged mate. She
was lucky, she was told, that only Dante had sought reprisal.
Oddly enough, Dante’s actions, reminiscent though they were of the slaughter
of my own people long ago, didn’t frighten me. Maybe it was the anguish in his
eyes when I was losing the baby. The protective gentleness with which he had
cradled me in his lap and called me beloved. Whatever he had done to me in the
past, the curse I had laid upon him and his line was as equally awful. They
cancelled each other out; that was my hope, at least. And life, each life was
different. I had to believe that. We’d messed this one up a little, but not
irrevocably. Not yet. We still had a second chance to right the wrongs of the
past. Or at least not repeat them.
Was the curse lifted from Dante? I don’t know. Had that life we created
together, however brief, been enough to break it? If so, that would mean that
when Dante died this time, he would not return again. And I found that thought
oddly painful.
Nolan and Hannah flew back home with me, having decided to stay in my service.
Why, you might ask, as I did?
“Because of the way he looked at you. And the way you looked at him. He will
return to you,” Hannah said. And their presence was a double guarantee of

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that. As his mother put it, “With us here, where else does he have to go?”
Maybe I’d gone a bit crazy, because the thought of him coming back to us
didn’t frighten me the way it should have.
My mind said one thing, but my heart said another. And what my heart said was,
Yes, come back to me. Come back soon.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A family practice physician and Vassar graduate, Sunny was finally pushed into
picking up her pen by the success of the rest of her family. Much to her
amazement, she found that, by golly, she actually could write a book. And that
it was much more fun than being a doctor. As an award-winning author, Sunny
has been featured on Geraldo at Large and CNBC. When she is not busy reading
and writing, Sunny is editing her husband’s books, literary novelist Da Chen,
and being a happy stage mom for her two talented kids.
Mona Lisa Darkening, the fourth book in her acclaimed Monère series, will be
released in January 2009. For excerpts, contests, and other news, please visit
www.sunnyauthor.com.

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